


Revisionism

by Acacia Carter (xaandria)



Series: Revisionism [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Timelines, Friendship, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-06
Updated: 2011-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-23 12:02:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 31,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xaandria/pseuds/Acacia%20Carter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time has a peculiar intelligence of its own. When a mistake has been made, it knows which tools to use to repair it, and this time around, those tools happen to be Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

"This is Christie Goeden reporting live for BBC, in the air over what used to be the heart of London. Approximately four hours ago, during the noon lunch hour, what seems to be a silent explosion has turned inner London into, as you can see, what appears to be a bubble of smoking light. Experts say it is no kind of radiation they have ever encountered, and attempts to measure it have so far been met with failure - all instruments register as zero for all known types of energy. As far as anyone has been able to determine, the 'Zero Space,' as it has been dubbed, is not increasing nor decreasing in size, but as yet there have been no survivors and search parties sent into the Zero Space have lost radio contact immediately. Homes and businesses within five hundred meters of the space have been evacuated and a protective perimeter has been established around the space, as well as a no-fly zone three kilometers around, and UN officials are meeting in an emergency session to determine what should be done in the absence of Parliament. Thus far no terrorist organization has come forward to claim responsibility for the attack. We will continue to update you on the situation as details become known. Once again this is Christie Goeden for BBC News."

* * *

 _Four Hours Previously_

"Harry!" A voice called down the hallway. Harry Potter turned to find the source of the familiar voice and as he spotted the man hurrying down the hallway, his face brightened with a grin.

"Neville!" he said, reaching out a hand that Neville Longbottom grasped and shook warmly. "What brings you to the Ministry today?"

Neville waved the scroll he was holding before tucking it into a pocket in his robes. "I'm teaching Merlin's Whisker to my N.E.W.T. class this year, but it's a Category Two Cultivation Restriction, so I needed to get a permit." He thumped Harry on the shoulder. "It's been a good while. How have things been?"

"Tell you what," Harry said, consulting his wristwatch, "I have to go drop something off at the Department of Mysteries, and then I can take you to lunch, if you have the time. We can take a bit to get caught up."

"I don't have anything else planned for the rest of the day," Neville said. "Sounds brilliant to me. Where should I meet you?"

"Oh, just come down the lift with me. I won't be a moment," Harry said as the lift doors opened. Neville hesitated.

"Are you supposed to be taking civilians into the Department of Mysteries?" he asked.

"I'm not taking you all the way in, you'll be waiting by the lift," Harry said as he stepped into the lift. He held the door for Neville, who shrugged and stepped in.

"How are the kids?" Harry asked as the lift descended.

"Doing quite well, actually. I do sometimes wish we hadn't sent them to Beauxbatons but Daisy so wanted to go abroad and where Daisy goes, Maggie follows, so that was a done deal. I will admit it makes it easier, not having to worry about accusations of playing favorites because my children are in my classes, and Beauxbatons does have an excellent curriculum, so I suppose I can't complain too heartily. How about yours?" Neville chuckled. "Does James cause as much trouble at home as he does at school?"

Harry sighed and rolled his eyes. "You have no idea. Ginny jokes that he's Fred reincarnated. Somehow he turned the cat inside out last week, no idea how he managed it...gave Lily a proper fright it did...surely he's not causing any problems in your classes, is he?"

"Not yet," Neville admitted, "But nary a day goes by in the staff room without someone regaling tales of woe. Or laughter. Usually laughter, since we can't laugh during the actual stunt. What are we dropping off, by the way? If I'm allowed to know?"

Harry lifted what appeared to be a compass with three hands that were drifting lazily. "It's an experimental Dark Detector they're working on. It's supposed to be able to detect wands that have recently performed Dark magic within your immediate vicinity, but when they had me test it in the field it went haywire..."

"Department of Mysteries," the lift announced, the the grille doors opened. Harry and Neville stepped out.

"It'll be dead useful when they finish it, we'll be able to Apparate directly onto a scene and be able to tell..." he trailed off, and then slowly drew his wand. "Do you hear that?" he asked in a low voice to Neville.

Neville had also drawn his wand, more in response to Harry's sudden vigilant behavior than anything else. He cocked his head to one side. "No," he responded in that same low voice.

"Get behind me," Harry said, and Neville scurried to comply. Harry slowly stepped down the corridor toward the door that led to the Department of Mysteries, listened hard for a moment, eyes closed.

Then Neville heard it too, a great ripping sound like a fruit suddenly and forcefully outgrowing its skin.

"Get down!" Harry shouted, throwing himself atop Neville as diamond sparkling light shone piercingly bright around the edges of the door, just before it blew off its hinges.

There was no heat, no sound, just the feeling of a giant concussive wave...


	2. Prologue

"Fancy having a bit of a snog with your boyfriend, Potter?" a disturbingly familiar voice jeered from behind them.

Harry's head snapped up and he blinked hard. The stone walls of the Ministry of Magic were no longer around him; he was somehow outside on a lawn, by a lake, and the sun wasn't quite enough to be warm but was still shining brightly.

"Oh, did I interrupt?" the voice said again, this time accompanied by laughter.

"Shove off, Malfoy," Harry responded automatically, then nearly clapped his hand over his mouth. What had happened to his voice?

He scrambled to his feet, his mind taking in turns his robes, his hands, the castle walls vaulting up to their left, and finally the teenaged Draco Malfoy, in robes of green and silver, leaning jauntily on his broomstick, flanked by likewise youthful Crabbe and Goyle.

"Harry?" Neville asked from the ground, his voice wavering. "What's going on?"

"Yeah, Harry, why'd you stop? Longbottom's disappointed," Malfoy taunted. Neville's face clouded as he took Harry's hand up, but it was the much more rounded face that Harry remembered from school, not the face he had recognized in the hall some few minutes ago.

Was this some sort of hallucination?

"Go away, Draco," Neville said, dusting himself off. "We don't have time for you right now."

Malfoy practically shrieked in laughter. "He hasn't time for us! And why's that, Longbottom, figure some of Potter's pitiful talents will rub off on you if you grope him long enough?"

"Malfoy," Harry said, "Get. Now. I'm not telling you again."

"Or what?" Malfoy asked, glancing to either side as though to make sure Crabbe and Goyle were still there.

"Leave. Now." Neville said with a tone of authority that even seemed to throw Malfoy off his stride for a split second.

"Looks like Longbottom thinks he's grown some teeth," Malfoy said, plunging his hand into the front of his robes. "Let's see how he -"

He did not get to complete his drawled threat. With the practiced, no-nonsense air of trained Aurors, Harry and Neville had drawn their wands in one quick motion and were aiming them unwaveringly at Malfoy's torso. Malfoy froze, wand half-drawn. Crabbe went as though to draw his own wand and Harry flicked his wand to the side just slightly, as though to show he had both Crabbe and Goyle in his sights as well.

"Go ahead and finish what you were going to say," Harry said in a low voice. "I'm sure I'll be fascinated to hear it."

Glaring, Malfoy shoved his wand back into his robes. "You might want some better places to play slap and tickle, Potter," he spat before spinning and striding away, Crabbe and Goyle watching over their shoulders as they followed. The group of students who had gathered to watch the altercation started to drift slowly away.

"Bollocks," Harry muttered. "Of course we've been seen - come on..." and he took off across the lawn, striding purposefully toward the castle. Neville nearly had to trot to keep up.

"Harry, what is going on?" He asked in a low voice as they reached the wall of what could only be Hogwarts Castle and began walking alongside it.

"Time," Harry said simply. He stopped suddenly, Neville nearly bowling into him, and looked rapidly around. They had walked enough of the wall that there were no other students to be seen, and Harry wordlessly knelt on the ground and motioned Neville to follow. From his school bag he produced a length of silvery fabric, which he draped over their heads without preamble.

"What -"

"Now they can't see -" Harry said, producing his wand, " - _Muffliato_ \- or hear us. Neville, that light that we saw. We've seen it before. When?"

Neville thought back briefly. "The Department of Mysteries. In that room with the hummingbird and all the clocks."

"Right. Remember what we figured out it was?"

A feeling like ice cold water seemed to seep into Neville from the torso outward. "Time...it was time."

Harry nodded. "I think I know what they do with it. It's carefully controlled, but it's pure time...they use it to infuse Time-Turners and the like...but something went wrong, and we were there and got caught in the aftermath." He looked like he badly wanted to pace. "Except something's not right. When Hermione and I used her Time-Turner -"

"When did Hermione have a Time-Turner?"

"Not important. When we used it, it sent us back in time, but in the bodies we had when we used the Time-Turner - we didn't outright replace ourselves from previously." He looked down at his hands. "But now we're...how old? What year is this?"

"Has to be fifth year," Neville said, brandishing his wand. "It's my dad's wand, so it's before it got broken at the Ministry, but Malfoy was wearing Quidditch robes, and there wasn't any Quidditch fourth year - and we weren't allowed out on the grounds much in third year because of Sirius Black."

Harry looked impressed. "Right. Okay. So we're in our fifteen-year-old bodies again, which is not supposed to happen when you do any sort of time travel - you're supposed to get sent back and you exist with the past version of yourself, not instead of..." Harry shook his head. "I have no idea what this all means," he admitted, looking straight at Neville. "I imagine the Ministry is putting things right as we speak, but...if it were just our adult selves sent back, we could go hide somewhere we wouldn't be seen until they put things straight, but I think we've replaced our past selves..."

"Which means we can't hide away," Neville said, cottoning on. "Else everything we're supposed to have done doesn't happen -" He stopped short. "Harry," he said urgently, "I don't remember every little thing I did back in fifth year at school."

"Neither do I," Harry said grimly. "I don't even know what day it is, we could be missing classes, and who knows what chaos that could cause - remember, Umbridge is in charge of discipline right now and she wants nothing more than to expel me..."

"It's late afternoon, and Malfoy was heading to the Quidditch pitch," Neville pointed out. "Classes are probably done for the day."

"Hmmph." Harry scowled. "What books do you have in your bag?"

Neville looked. "Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts..."

"So, assuming I remember right, either a Monday or a Thursday," Harry said, also opening his bag. "Ha!" He pulled out a thin diary triumphantly and let it fall open to a page that said TODAY in bold letters across the top.

" _Leave for tomorrow what can be done today and your work will increase while you go and play!_ " the book admonished him. Neville raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly from the book to Harry.

"It was a gift from Hermione," Harry mumbled. "But at least we know it's a Monday now. The one before Easter holidays, it looks like." He paused. "Great, so now we have to figure out what we're going to do this week to avoid crashing the entire space-time continuum."

"You're taking this awfully well," Neville said bluntly. Harry shot him a Look.

"Ignoring everything that happened to me - to us - before we were even twenty, let's see. My Auror combat trainer ended up being a Dryad warrior princess with a glamour so powerful it had been duping the Ministry for centuries, I've had to save the ghost population of Bath from a crazy Russian necromancer, my youngest son has accidentally turned my daughter into a chicken _twice_ , and just last week someone sent our floor a cursed parcel that made the direction of gravity change based on the position of the minute hand on the clock." His mouth twisted into a wry smile. "I'm actually surprised you're not coming over all hysterical yourself."

"I teach in a school where 'Weasley Wizard Wheezes' are practically holy artifacts," Neville said flatly. "Once I was stuck in a fishbowl for three hours. I've learned to take things in stride, and have the hysterics later. What?" he asked, for Harry had just blanched and started patting his pockets as though he had lost something.

"Monday before Easter hols...Neville, we've got a D.A. meeting tonight," Harry said breathlessly, pulling out the Galleon that they had used to communicate meeting times. "And it's the one that gets raided. Which means that tonight is the night Dumbledore leaves." He looked intently at Neville. "We have to go see him. He can..."

"Do what?" Neville asked shrewdly. "As I understand it, we're already violating a whole bucketful of laws concerning time travel just by not being where we were twenty-something years ago. What are we going to do, waltz into Dumbledore's office and tell him we're visiting from the future, could we be let off of classes until such a time as we can go back? He'll think we're mental."

"No," Harry said, "He won't think we're mental." He sighed forcefully. "I'm going to go see him. You don't have to come, but I think you should. I think he can help us, somehow - he's one of the greatest wizards to have ever lived, I'm certain he can come up with something -"

"Harry," Neville said firmly, reaching out to grab Harry's arm. "Are you sure you're not just going to see Dumbledore alive again?"

Harry paused. "Of course I am," he admitted. "But I also think that he's the only person who can help us right now. The two don't need to be mutually exclusive. If nothing else, he can give us some perspective on what we need to do. What time d'you think it is?"

Neville glanced at the sun. "Five o'clock? I think the meeting is at seven?"

Harry nodded and they carefully stood up to keep the invisibility cloak around them.

* * *

It took a great deal of guessing the password at the gargoyle guarding Dumbledore's office; Harry suspected that the gargoyle let them in out of impatience rather than having remembered the correct one. Once inside the winding stairway Harry pulled off the cloak and stuffed it back in his bag before knocking on the office door at the top.

"Come," came Dumbledore's calm response.

Harry's hand paused on the doorknob, almost fearing to open the door. Emotions were at war inside him, some half-forgotten in the blur of time. Behind this door was the man who had shaped Harry into who he was now. To see those gentle blue piercing eyes again, from behind the half-moon spectacles...knowing that they would be closed eternally in little more than a year...

He pushed open the door and he and Neville entered the office.

Harry gave a little start to see the man behind the desk, fingers steepled, looking straight at him.

"Mr. Potter. Mr. Longbottom. I am surprised to see you." His eyes twinkled. "I do believe you have an appointment later on today, do you not?"

Somehow, the knowledge that Dumbledore had known about the D.A. was not surprising. Neville opened his mouth as though to speak, but Harry glanced at him.

"Sir," Harry said, "We need to tell you something that is going to sound absolutely nutters, and is probably breaking a thousand laws to boot."

"Business as usual, then," Dumbledore said wryly. "You may continue."

"We're not supposed to be here," Harry said. "We're supposed to be some twenty-some-odd years from now."

If Dumbledore was surprised, he did not let it show on his face.

"There was some sort of accident at the Ministry of Magic," Neville supplied. "Something in the time room, where we think they make the Time-Turners. There was an explosion, and we were caught in it."

"It's not like using a Time-Turner," Harry said. "Probably because we got hit with pure time. If we'd used Time-Turners, we'd be here as adults. We've been forced into being fifteen years old again instead, but we know where - er, when - we're supposed to be. We remember everything leading up to the accident. We're sure the Ministry is working on cleaning up the mess, but in the meantime, we're not sure what is the best course of action to take."

There was a pregnant pause. "I see," Dumbledore said.

"Professor, I swear it's all true -" Harry began, but Dumbledore put up a hand and Harry fell silent.

"I need no more evidence to know that things are as you say," he said, rising from behind his desk. "If nothing else, the way Mr. Longbottom is currently comporting himself is proof enough." Neville gave Dumbledore a quizzical look and Dumbledore smiled kindly at him. "Neville, you have never once been in my office before, nor have we ever really spoken. If we were to go by your track record up until this point, I would assume that your first visit to me would have reduced you to a nervous wreck. Am I much mistaken?"

Neville smiled self-deprecatingly. "No, Professor," he said. "That's a rather succinct way of putting it."

Dumbledore beamed at him, then turned his gaze back to Harry. "An accident much as you have described it has happened once before at the Ministry - that I know of," he said, stepping slowly towards one of his many silver machines on the small spindly tables dotting the room. "Some eighty years ago, it was. I am, of course, forbidden to speak to any of it." He winked as he drew his wand and prodded the machine.

Instantly, it began emitting razor-thin threads of the diamond bright light, trailing away from the device like spider's silk on a breeze. Harry's breath caught as they began to dance in the air about them, assembling themselves into something that almost appeared to be sheet music, but infinitely more complex.

"Time," Dumbledore said, as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening, "is an incredibly intricate tapestry. Wizards can study it for many, many years and never truly understand how it works the way it does. Consider this line here, Harry," he said, raising his wand and tapping one infinitely fine line. It glowed gold for a moment before settling back into its bright silver shine.

Harry squinted at it, tried to follow it as it whirled and touched other lines, doubled back on itself once, and continued on to the other side of the room where Neville was standing. "What is it, sir?" he asked.

"It is your own timeline," Dumbledore said. "Your life, as it were, currently unfolding. Neville, I do believe this one to be yours."

Harry reached out a trembling finger to his. "And the other lines..."

"Are the other people your life is twined with," Dumbledore finished.

Harry gazed along the line. Yes, there were the two lines he was sure were Ron and Hermione, winding about his at some points and straying off to the side at others...his eyes scanned forward and he reached out a finger to touch three shorter lines stemming from his and another's. "And these?"

Dumbledore glanced at them, then adjusted his spectacles and looked more closely. "How fascinating," he breathed, looking up to scan lines around him. He looked sharply at Harry. "This device is only supposed to show timelines up to their current point, not project into the future...at least not unless..." He turned as though to seek another line, then stopped. "Those three lines would be your children, Harry. I shall assume you already know of them?"

Harry smiled. "Yes, sir."

"I see," was the response. Dumbledore shot a glance at Neville. "And your children appear on your timeline as well, I assume?"

"Yes," Neville said simply, with a slightly wavering tone. Harry wrenched his eyes away from his own timeline to see what was disturbing Neville so.

Neville was tracing the ragged ends of the white lines across the room, where they waved as though trying to find a place to attach. They did not shine with the bright light of the rest of the lines, but looked...dull. Frayed.

Dumbledore stopped next to Neville and sighed. "Yes. This is what I feared when you described the accident at the Ministry." He raised his wand and gestured, so slightly Harry almost couldn't make it out, and dozens of tiny red dots appeared at various intersections of Harry and Neville's lines. At the beginning of the lines there were very few, but as the lines progressed they became more and more clustered until finally the lines themselves from one point forward glowed red.

The red spiderwebbed along all the other lines as they intersected theirs, like spilled ink on parchment, giving the whole map of twisting and whirling lines a diseased look. It spread to the end and the red light bled into the air, no longer confined to the timelines, seeping uncontrolled. It was a remarkably unsettling image, for no reason that Harry could put his finger on.

Dumbledore gave another twitch of his wand and the red dissipated, leaving only the white lines twisting in the air.

"Sir?" Neville asked. "What...was that?"

"That," Dumbledore said, his voice heavy, "Is what happens to Time when there has been a mistake."


	3. Clarity

The bright lines danced about in the silence for a moment before Harry wet his lips. "What sort of mistake?"

"Oh, all the little should-have-beens," Dumbledore said. "Chance encounters that never happened, plates of chips never ordered, illnesses recovered from an hour early. Inconsequential things that ought to have happened, and didn't."

"But how does that work?" Neville asked. "How can there be a mistake if things just...happen?"

"Oh, Time has a fairly good idea of where things are going," Dumbledore said with a kindly smile. "Think of it as water poured onto a slope. There is only one direction it can go, and if you study the slope you can usually predict which path the water will take. This is how the Seers practice their art; they can See, in part, how the water of Time is going to flow. But place a pebble in the right juncture and you can change how the water flows. And if a bird flies over and drops a twig, things can be diverted in completely unpredictable ways." Dumbledore raised his wand and tapped the point where Harry and Neville's timelines first intersected, turning it red again. "This point here, for example, represents something unexpected happening that changed how events turned out. In most cases, Time is simply diverted in another direction, and the flow continues toward the intended result. But sometimes - not often, but rarely - a small event diverts things just enough that it causes other, more serious diversions, for years on end - perhaps centuries - to the point where there are so many diversions from the original flow that it cannot fill the spaces. We, quite literally, run out of Time, and life cannot survive if it does not have Time to survive within." A chill ran down Harry's spine, remembering the red bleeding off into nothingness.

"So this device can tell the future?" Neville asked. Dumbledore chuckled.

"Not usually, no - the timelines are never this clear, and I imagine it is drawing upon the Time still inherent in your memories to create something this complete. No, what this device can do is show a general idea of where the current is likely to flow. It is why I was convinced Voldemort would return, and why I am reasonably certain he shall fall - the paths that are most likely to lead to his defeat are paths that will likely be followed. I assume that your presence here, yours and Harry's, means that he will indeed be vanquished, as he must be." He smiled a little sadly as he contemplated a line. "Ah, I see that I am not long for this world," he said as he tapped a line that ended abruptly with his wand. Harry opened his mouth and Dumbledore held up a hand in abeyance. "I suspected it, and it is good to know for certain - it means that I can make some necessary preparations." He turned to Harry, a certain pain showing on his face. "You understand, my boy, why I had to do the certain things I did - and will continue to do?"

Harry nodded. "I didn't at first. But I did at...at the end."

Dumbledore nodded. "I am not proud of myself for putting you in such a situation, but I am remarkably proud of you for doing what has to be done." He turned back to the timelines, continuing as though he had not interrupted himself at all. "This explosion in the Department of Mysteries, when they were attempting to create new Time-Turners - your guess was quite apt - is what happens when Time unravels itself when there are too many diversions from what must happen. They attempted to draw upon stores of Time that were no longer connected to any possible future. You were caught in the backlash - had possibly even been manipulated by Time to be there in the right place at that moment. Time has an unusual intelligence of its own."

"For what purpose?" Harry asked, his gaze returning to the small red point.

"Why, Harry, I would think you'd be used to it by now," Dumbledore said with a small smile. "You must save the world." And he tapped a second silver clockwork device.

Emerald green smoke floated into the air around the diamond bright lines, winding about them like spun sugar before snapping into place as lines of their own, above and slightly behind the white lines like a shadow.

"This is one possible way small events could be changed to prevent the dangerous diversions that sent you here," Dumbledore said. "It is one of many, but the first is usually the one closest to how time actually ended up."

Harry leaned closer to the red pinpoint of light highlighting the first intersection of his and Neville's lines. "It's slightly different here," he said, reaching out with one finger. "In the real timeline, Ron's line intersects mine before Neville's. But in the green one, Neville's is first."

Neville had paled. "Harry," he said, "I was going to open the door to your compartment on the train, but then Trevor hopped out of my hands and I had to go chase him. Ron ended up opening the doors instead, and I couldn't find Trevor..."

"An astute observation," Dumbledore commended. "You see how one tiny, inconsequential event can change the entire path of one's life. Had you opened the door first, on that first train to Hogwarts, you and he would likely have shared the close friendship that ended up being the province of Harry and Ron. That is not to say," he continued as Harry's face fell slightly, "that Ron would not have been your friend, nor that Miss Granger would not have joined your coterie. As you can see, if you follow the lines, it would appear that the four of you will embark upon the many adventures that were reserved for just you three the first time around." He smiled slightly. "It rather reminds me of another foursome that roamed the halls of this castle, led by another young man by the name of Potter." Harry smiled slightly.

"So we're supposed to change history?" Neville asked in surprise.

"I daresay you've already changed it," Dumbledore pointed out. "But _when_ you change history is every bit as important as _how_."

Harry stared hard at the green timelines as they twisted their way across the room. "But we were sent to this time," he protested. "How are we supposed to...fix things, or whatever we're supposed to do, if we weren't sent to the correct time?"

"Oh, I imagine you were both sent to the exact point you needed to be," Dumbledore said, eyes twinkling. "You see, this particular device has been out of order until very recently - this very afternoon, in fact."

"And I...um. I'm sorry, Professor, but I break that device in a few months," Harry said, both excitedly and apologetically.

"Oh?" Dumbledore said with a raised eyebrow, looking amused. "And under what circumstances does this happen?"

Harry fidgeted. "I probably shouldn't say, and it's not...very interesting...anyway," he said finally.

"I see," Dumbledore said, nodding slowly. "At any rate, you were sent here to obtain the vital information and understanding it has imparted to you, as well as learn of the mission upon which it would appear you have been sent. I imagine that Time shall provide both the opportunity and the means to do what it needs doing in order to put into motion a future that can happen." He waved his wand as though collecting cobwebs, the white and green timelines both winding about it, then deposited the timelines into a flask, which he corked and handed to Harry. "What needs to be done should be fairly obvious at the time," he said as Harry inspected the flask, "But should you need to consult the cheat sheet, you have it there. Unstoppering the flask should release the point in time you are currently inhabiting." He smiled gently. "And do not be dismayed if it seems you cannot recall things. Your reactions to events must be genuine, not calculated, and being able to remember your lives as you know them will disrupt that."

Harry stowed the flask away safely in his school bag, his brain churning with questions. "If everything is supposed to be genuine and unplanned, why send us here in the first place for an explanation? Why not just send us back to fix things without a clue?"

"Because a choice needs to be made," Dumbledore said seriously. "And only you two can decide if you are going to make it. You are undoubtedly going to be sacrificing a great deal of the lives you know in order to ensure that this new timeline comes to pass. You will have to choose whether the sacrifice is worth it."

"Didn't you say that if history doesn't get changed, the entire world ceases to exist?" Neville asked.

"Something to that effect, yes. Although it won't cease to exist; it will just cease to continue. There is a subtle, but important, difference."

"So basically we have to choose between our lives as we know them and saving the world," Harry said sarcastically. "That's a hard decision."

Dumbledore did not smile. "Harder than you can probably comprehend. Keep in mind that ceasing to continue will not cause anguish or pain to anyone. Everything will simply...stop. Changing the timeline so that life can continue will mean that life will continue - along with all the pain and suffering and joy and love that life has to offer."

"Still not something that will take much thinking," Harry said.

Dumbledore bowed his head. "I would not expect you to make any other decision, when life is on the line," he said somberly. "Also keep in mind that you shall retain memory of what your life once was, alongside what your new life will be; you will not be allowed to be oblivious."

"What if we choose wrong?" Harry asked. "If we're not remembering what we're supposed to be doing..." he trailed off as Dumbledore shook his head.

"The right decisions will stem very naturally from who you are and what you believe to be right," he said very seriously. "That is likely why Time chose you to be its tools."

"How is it that you know so much about what is going to happen?" Neville asked suddenly.

Dumbledore winked. "Suffice to say that this is not, to use the common phrase, my first rodeo." A diamond bright light suddenly shone from the doorway behind them, and Neville and Harry turned in surprise. "If I may say so," Dumbledore said, his voice sounding as though it was coming from very far away, "Happy traveling."


	4. Beginnings

Harry blinked and shook his head to clear it. How could he be daydreaming on a day like this? In just a few hours, he would be setting foot in Hogwarts for the first time...

A knock sounded at the compartment door and Harry jumped. Colors seemed to swirl in the back of his mind, and he shook his head again. "Yes?" he answered politely.

The round-faced boy who had been looking for his toad on the train platform peeked his head in. "Is it all right if I sit in here? Everywhere else is full."

"Sure!" Harry said, moving Hedwig's cage to the side to make room. The boy flopped down onto a seat in relief. A shape paused outside the compartment, then continued on.

"Thanks." He looked down at his hands, which were full of a very large toad, and hastily put the toad down on the seat next to him before sticking out a hand. "I'm Neville Longbottom."

"Harry Potter," Harry said, somewhat gingerly taking Neville's hand. Neville's jaw dropped.

"Really?" he asked keenly. His eyes flicked upward to Harry's forehead, an expression Harry was sure he was going to have to get used to. He nodded, smiling as Neville's eyes grew wide. "Wow. I knew you were my age but I never...I mean, I didn't think..." Neville seemed to be thinking of too many words to sort out which ones he wanted to say, and so fell silent.

The toad croaked, then jumped from the seat to the floor.

"Trevor, no!" Neville grasped for the toad, which leaped deftly to avoid the boy's hands. Harry shot a hand out and managed to pin one of the toad's legs to the floor. It croaked reproachfully at him as Neville gathered it up. "Thanks," he said, tucking the toad into the front of his jumper. "He's forever trying to get away from me, I don't know why..."

"He's big," Harry said, more for something to say than anything else. Neville beamed.

"My Great Uncle Algie got him for me, first time I did magic," he said proudly, puffing out his chest (although that could have just been Trevor shifting position). "My Gran was worried I didn't have any magic at all, see, and so Algie kept trying to scare it out of me."

"Did you grow up in a family of wizards?" Harry asked, his interest piqued. Neville nodded.

"It was mostly just me and Gran, but other family'd come around rather often. I'm the youngest in the family, people were always stopping by to see how I was coming along...I heard you grew up with Muggles, what was that like?"

"Awful," Harry responded, a little more honestly than he might have. "First time I did magic I got shut in the cupboard under the stairs and didn't get fed for two days."

"No way," Neville said.

"I mean, not all Muggles are like that," Harry amended quickly. "My aunt, though, apparently she hated my mum and dad for being magic...she and my uncle tried to keep me coming to school."

"They tried to keep Harry Potter from learning magic?" Neville asked, his eyes round as saucers.

"Well, it's not like I'm...like I'm famous or whatever, in the Muggle world," Harry pointed out. "I reckon Muggles don't know anything about Voldemort or - what?" For Neville's eyes had just bulged and the color had drained from his plump cheeks.

"You say his name?" Neville asked in a half whisper. Harry recalled Hagrid's extreme reluctance to say the name, and determined that perhaps it wasn't one of the giant man's idiosyncrasies after all.

"I never knew I shouldn't," he said somewhat glumly. "I don't know anything about the magic world, my aunt and uncle tried hard as they could to keep me from it. I bet I'll be rubbish at school."

"No, that'll be me," Neville said in a matching tone of despondence. "Gran didn't even really want to give me dad's wand, but decided that was what he'd want..." he trailed off as though realizing what he was saying.

"Are your parents dead too, then?" Harry asked sympathetically. Neville squirmed.

"Well..."

A knock on the door of the compartment made them both jump, and an expression that looked very much like relief washed over Neville's face.

The red-haired boy from the train station looked in. "All right if I join you? My brothers are driving me mad."

Harry glanced at Neville, who shrugged. "Sure," he said.

"Thanks." The boy came the rest of the way in and sat next to Harry. "I'm Ron. Ron Weasley."

"Neville Longbottom," Neville supplied.

"Harry Potter," Harry said. Ron's face split into a grin.

"So they weren't pulling my leg! I thought it might have been one of Fred and George's jokes, you see...you're really Harry Potter!"

"That's going to get old very fast," Harry observed to no one. Ron immediately reddened.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

"No!" Harry said hurriedly. "It's no problem, really, I'm just...not used to it. I guess I'll need to get that way."

Hedwig hooted loudly, easing the tension slightly. Ron looked impressed.

"That's a gorgeous owl," he said with a tinge of jealousy. "He yours?"

"She. Her name's Hedwig. She was a birthday present from Hagrid," Harry responded.

"Isn't he the gamekeeper at school?" Neville asked. Harry nodded.

"He was the one who finally told me about Hogwarts and that I'm a wizard and all that," he explained. "I had no idea until he told me, about anything. And when he saw how my aunt and uncle were treating me, and found out I didn't know anything about magic or any of it, he took me to Diagon Alley and got me Hedwig."

"Lucky," Ron said. "All I've got is Scabbers." From his pocket he drew a very worn-looking rat, which didn't wake up from its nap and continued to hang limply from Ron's hand.

Harry felt a sudden unnatural urge to grab the rat and throw it out the window of the moving train. Colors danced behind Harry's eyes and he blinked them away. As defenestrating a stranger's pet rodent is not the best way to kindle a friendship, Harry ignored the impulse and settled in to the somewhat stilted but congenial conversation of people who are rapidly becoming friends.

The rest of the day passed in a blur; Harry only clearly remembered a bushy-haired girl named Hermione bursting into their compartment to chastise them after Draco Malfoy, the pale blond boy he had met in Diagon Alley, had nearly spurred them all into a fistfight. Snatches of memory wafted through his mind as he settled into his four-poster bed in his dormitory to sleep; he had been pleased when Neville and Ron were both sorted into Gryffindor with him, though a niggling worm of doubt still reminded him that the Sorting Hat had wanted to place him in Slytherin, and images of the inside of the castle kept forming and disappearing as his mind tried to process all the events of the day.

He could hear the other four boys in the first-year dormitory settling themselves into sleep; Ron snored softly in the bed on the right, and Neville turned over, rustling his sheets in the bed on the left. Harry smiled, snugged his head a little deeper into his pillow, and was about to drift off...

Could he have attributed a sound to the sensation he felt, it would have been the slamming of a very large steel door. The colors that had been whirling through his head the entire day firmly attached themselves, shocking him awake and disorienting him completely.

His brain stopped gibbering and Harry looked down at himself. Oh. Right. He was eleven years old now. He found it hard to believe he had ever been quite this small, even with evidence before him.

"Harry?" came Neville's whisper. "Did you -"

"Yes," Harry whispered back. "Common room." He didn't want to talk where Dean, Seamus, and Ron could overhear should they wake up.

In pajamas (Harry was amused to once again see Neville in his teddy bear flannels), Harry and Neville quietly stole down to the common room, pausing to make sure it was empty before taking a seat by the fire, which flared up again once it knew there was someone nearby. Harry pulled his wand from his sleeve and muttered " _Muffliato_ " to ensure they would not be overheard.

"That was a bit intense, no?" Neville asked. Harry chuckled.

"A bit like a stiff Sobering Draft after a long night of it," he agreed. "So...think we're done here? I mean, we've met on the train first now, and..." he wrinkled his brow. "That's...odd."

"The memories?" Neville asked. "Yeah. It's almost like deja vu. I remember everything that happened in my first year the first time...and now I remember everything that happened in _this_ first year, and it seems almost...truer. Like it's the proper memory, which I suppose it is now." He shook his head. "It's going to take some getting used to." He considered for a moment. "Still can't believe I let Hermione use fire on that Devil's Snare."

"It was either that or be strangled to death," Harry pointed out. "Still can't believe you caught the key. That's a real bruise to a Seeker's pride, you know."

"Maybe you shouldn't have taught me to fly."

"I'll take your point into consideration," Harry said wryly. "At any rate, if we're done here...why are we still here? Why not just poof back to where we came from?"

"I...don't actually think we're done," Neville said slowly. "I can't really remember anything beyond summer hols between first and second year, aside from what happened in our own timeline, and the two timelines do not jive and it's actually giving me a bit of a headache." Neville kneaded his temples and Harry had to agree; trying to remember his second year at school and reconcile it with this new first year made him want to go cross-eyed. Neville opened one eye suddenly. "Do you still have that flask?"

Harry stared at Neville. "I have no idea. I put it in my school bag when Dumbledore gave it to me, but I don't own that bag yet. Where would it be? For that matter, why would I even have it at all? I didn't get to keep my socks or my wedding band."

"I just get the feeling that if Dumbledore was really supposed to be our guide, he'd have taken the whole bodily transport thing into account, and made that flask stick to us like glue," Neville said. "Your trunk, maybe?"

"I'll go check," Harry said dubiously, "But I already unpacked it, and it wasn't there."

He tiptoed up to the dormitory and probably shouldn't have been surprised to see white light shining from between the cracks of the trunk at the foot of his bed. Quietly as he could, he opened the trunk, removed the flask, shut the lid, and stole back downstairs.

"It wasn't in there before," he insisted as he handed it to Neville. Neville, rather wisely, said nothing as he wrenched out the stopper.

The now-familiar white and green lines flew out of the flask, but not all of them - only a small cross-section, large enough to span the couch but not enough to fill the room as they had done in Dumbledore's office. Harry wasn't sure how he recognized his own line, as it was identical to the several dozen others that had emerged, but he knew which one was his. Frustratingly enough, however, that was the only thing he knew as he looked at the lines; the rest of it made as much sense as a day-old spiderweb.

"Here," Neville said, pointing. "This was where things were different. The white line changed, you and I met first...and that changed the whole school year, I stuck to you like glue, even through to the end of the year..." he trailed his finger along the lines, then stopped. "Here's another diversion. Looks like..." his eyes scanned the other lines as Harry studied the point beneath Neville's finger, trying to comprehend the mass of whorls and intersections that Neville seemed to be able to navigate with ease. "Just before second year, we meet up at Diagon Alley - that's new, or at least it was new, looks like it actually happened already - will happen already - damn tenses, you know what I mean." He moved his finger forward just slightly. "Middle of second year...what did we do second year again?"

"Basilisk," Harry said. "Saved my future wife from certain doom. Killed a horcrux while we were at it. You know, the usual."

"Right," Neville said, nodding. "Well, this go round I'm in on the plans with the Polyjuice Potion but I stay clear of the actual brewing, as I'm sure that even being near it will cause it spontaneously combust..."

"How can you tell all this just by these lines?" Harry interrupted.

"Hm?" Neville asked, cocking his head to one side. "Oh. You've got to touch them - here -" he reached out to grab Harry's hand and placed his fingers on his green timeline.

Harry blinked in surprise, more at the familiarity of Neville touching him than the vague impressions of something that was almost like memory from the line. But then it made sense, didn't it? Even after changing just one event, he felt more...companionable toward the round-faced boy holding his hand over the wispy lines, as though he'd known him for much longer than he had.

Neville suddenly seemed to realize what he was doing and let go, though not hurriedly. As he did, the impressions of memory fled.

"Hey - it went away," Harry said. "Do that again."

Neville raised an eyebrow, but grabbed Harry's hand again. Harry nodded.

"Apparently you literally have to hold my hand to get me to understand them," he said. He studied the pattern for a bit, then sat down on the couch. "I think I'll just leave you to it, if it's all the same to you."

"Right. Anyway." Neville turned back to the timelines, one hand tracing the white and one the green. "It looks like we're actually going to have to shepherd events into going the way they need to go. We don't have to go and change every single little thing, but these big revisions...like here, where I go down into the Chamber of Secrets with you and Ron...it seems like every big revision we make is going to make the white timeline more like the green one."

"But how do we know when we're done?" Harry asked. "We can only see a couple months at a time."

Neville shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe we'll just show back up in our time again."

The conversation lapsed. Neville made to put the stopper back in the flask and the lines obediently retreated into it.

"To bed, then?" Harry asked. Neville nodded.

"No telling where we'll end up tomorrow. Or when. May as well get some rest while we can."


	5. A New Player

The tunnel had the eerie silence of a graveyard, the occasional drip the only sound.

"Lumos," Harry, Neville, and Ron muttered. The three lights illuminated wet stone walls, shining their light back at them. Even in the dim light, Neville looked very pale and frightened, while Ron just looked drawn and ill. Harry wondered what he looked like.

"Now, boys," Lockhart said, glancing around anxiously. "It hardly seems you need me at all here, I think I'll just head back up -"

He gulped as all three of them pointed their wands at him. "Or not."

Harry jerked his head down the passageway. "You can lead the way."

With a defeated look on his face, Lockhart began to step carefully down the tunnel, which was so dark that even three wands could not illuminate more than a few feet of it.

"Remember to close your eyes if you see anything," Neville whispered. "Or else we're all dead."

They continued on, stepping carefully, straining their eyes to see ahead. Was that movement? No, just a shadow from their wands...

"What's that?" Ron croaked in the same instant that Harry saw it. Neville tried to gasp but choked instead, and Lockhart had frozen as though practicing for Petrification.

It was a huge, scaly...something, blocking the tunnel, iridescent green in their wandlight but not moving.

"Maybe it's dead," Neville whispered hopefully. Harry shook his head, inching closer to it, looking out of the corner of his eye, ready to move his head at the slightest twitch of movement. Neville followed, then Ron, wands held high to make the light go farther. Harry thought his heart was going to burst out of his chest, was surprised that the sound was not echoing off the walls like their footsteps.

The lights collected on a shed snake skin, hollow and translucent and empty. Judging by the skin's size, the basilisk that had shed it couldn't be an inch shorter than a train car, and Harry didn't think he'd be able to wrap his arms round it, should he get the suicidal urge to give it a hug.

"Blimey," Ron and Neville said together. They looked at each other and tried to smile.

Behind them, Lockhart crumpled to the floor - his knees had apparently given away.

"Get up, now," Ron said, turning around and pointing his wand at the wizard. "You're still going first -"

But as Lockhart regained his feet, he dove toward Ron and tackled him against the wall and to the ground.

Harry and Neville both turned and pointed their wands, but Harry's stomach fell - Lockhart had Ron's wand, and was grinning spectacularly in an expression that made him look as though he'd finally worked out where to hide the bodies.

"Adventure's over!" he announced as though revealing that exams had been canceled. "I'll go back up to the school...tell them that you were all far too distraught at the sight of the girl's body, lost your minds in anguish, you did...or will, anyway...take a bit of skin with me, of course..." Harry could swear Lockhart had more teeth than any human had a right to, and every single one of them was gleaming in the wandlight. "Good show, boys. Now say goodbye to your memories!"

He raised Ron's wand high and bellowed, " _Obliviate!_ "

And the wand exploded with a great booming crack.

Harry clasped his arms over his head and threw himself out of the way as pieces of ceiling the size of boulders crashed down around him. The noise thundered through the tunnel, echoing off into the darkness for what seemed to be a very long time.

When it finally quieted, Harry slowly brought his arms down.

"Harry?" Ron called. "Neville?" His voice was muffled, and Harry could soon see why: he was on the other side of the giant mound of rubble that now filled the tunnel.

"Ron!" he shouted. "You all right?"

"Mostly," Ron called back. "The idiot's not, though, my wand blasted him...You?"

"Mostly," Harry responded, kneeling down next to Neville, who was uncurling from the fetal position on the ground. "Neville?" Neville looked up with a dazed expression, his eyes unfocused. Harry could see a large lump under his hairline that was already beginning to purple. "Neville? Are you all right?" he asked again.

"Hum? Oh. Um. What?" Neville asked, blinking. He didn't seem able to blink his eyes at the same time. Harry stood up and looked around. The tunnel was completely filled with rubble, and cracks were appearing in the ceiling. If he stayed to try and clear it, it could all come down...and every second he spent here was another second Ginny would be in danger...

"Right. Okay. Ron! Wait...wait there. I'm taking Neville with me, he's hit his head, if the basilisk comes along he's dead if I leave him here. Wait with Lockhart and...if we're not back in an hour..."

There was a pause accentuated by the light sound of a pebble dislodging itself and rolling down the pile of rubble.

"I'll try to clear a way for you," Ron said finally. "So you can get back through. Later. And..."

"I'll see you later," Harry said firmly, attempting to sound a lot more confident than he felt. Once again he knelt next to Neville. "Come on," he said gently. "Can you walk?"

Neville blinked owlishly in response, but did not protest when Harry pulled him to his feet and pulled him along. He could walk, if extremely unsteadily. Harry held Neville by the upper arm in one hand, his lit wand held in front of him with the other, as he set down the winding tunnels. He walked, half-pulling, half-dragging Neville along, for what could have been hours or minutes, through the dark, wet tunnels that never seemed to end.

And then they did end, in a solid wall flanked by two great serpent carvings, their eyes set with emeralds that glinted in the wandlight.

Harry tried to swallow, already knowing what he would have to do. "Open," he said, and it came out as a dry, papery hiss.

The wall cracked down the center and opened. Trembling, he walked through, pulling the addled Neville behind him.

The dimly lit chamber was lined by looming stone pillars carved with yet more snakes, and at the end of the chamber was -

Harry's breath caught. Under an enormous, hideous carving of a bearded man lay a very small form with bright red hair.

"Ginny!" he shouted. He tried running, pulling Neville behind, but this task required slightly too much coordination from the other boy. Halfway there, he gave up and deposited Neville behind one of the pillars, hopefully out of the line of sight of the basilisk if it came, and sprinted the rest of the way down the chamber.

* * *

Neville felt very odd.

It was dark where he was, he got that much. This was good, because the light that seemed to be coming from behind him was awfully bright. It made his head hurt.

Gingerly he reached a hand up to touch the lump on his head and winced, bringing it back down. It seemed the size of a Quaffle and throbbed painfully with every heartbeat that sounded in his ears, unnaturally loud against the high whine that seemed to fill the rest of his hearing. He could not hear much else - there was a conversation happening in back of him, but it was muffled, like it was coming from very far away from under a pile of duvets...he thought he recognized Harry's voice, but he didn't know who the other person was.

He opened his eyes and turned very slightly and his head spun. Nope, that wasn't happening yet.

He felt very tired, but something screamed inside him that this was not the proper time to take a nap.

The voices behind him were raised, now, as though there were an argument happening. Were they arguing over Ginny? What was going on? Neville tried to turn his head again and could now see Harry and another boy, almost a grown man. Keeping them focused was difficult, he let his eyes relax and the scene went blurry. Head pounding, Neville closed his eyes and rested his head back against the pillar.

Whether he blacked out or actually dozed off, he couldn't tell, but the sudden loud crashing woke him with a start, as the pillar he was leaning against began to shake mightily. Great blocks of stone rained from above him and instinctively, he curled into the fetal position, arms over his head, trying to make himself as small a target as he could for the long, sinuous, green serpent he had glimpsed...

Someone was yelling loudly in a ghastly, hissing sound -

There was a horrible high screeching noise -

Neville lowered his arms from his head and slowly, so slowly, peeked around the pillar, blanching at the scene in front of him.

A great blindingly green serpent lay twitching on the ground, in its death throes...and the other young man was standing over Harry with a wand...Harry was on the ground, not moving, a giant red bird bent over him...was all that blood Harry's? It couldn't be...you couldn't lose that much blood and still be alive...a fang the size of a dagger protruded from his upper arm...

What was the other young man saying? Neville blinked hard and tried to pierce through the high humming in his ears.

"And so ends the famous Harry Potter," he was saying, a sneer in his voice. "Alone in the Chamber of Secrets, forsaken by his friends..."

Oh, no. That wasn't going to do at all.

Neville drew his wand and pointed it, hand shaking.

What was he doing? He'd never gotten the knack of the spell, even against someone standing still as a perfect target dummy, and unless he crossed his eyes there were two of this young man with the wand pointing at his best friend...

He squeezed one eye shut, picked the one of the figures that seemed most solid, and shouted, " _Expelliarmus!_ "

The young man looked quite shocked as the wand he had been holding shot out of his hand toward Neville. "What -"

Neville lurched to his feet and threw himself toward Harry in a shambling sort of crawl. "Harry!" No, all that blood couldn't possibly be his, it was too much...Neville retched as he grasped the daggerlike fang that went straight through Harry's arm and pulled it out, prompting a new wash of blood. The red and orange bird bowed its head over the wound and Neville turned in a fury toward the young man.

"You killed him!" he accused in a dreadful voice he almost didn't recognize as his own. His head pounded.

"Who the hell are you?" the other young man demanded.

"I'd never forsake him!" Neville responded heatedly, not knowing why it was so important this arrogant bastard knew it. "He's always got me! Always!"

"Sorry to say it, but it would appear your friend is a dead man," the other young man said smugly, seeming to have regained his composure. "Even Dumbledore's bird knows it...look, it's crying..."

And sure enough, pearly tears were rolling from the bird's eyes, splashing Harry's wound. The boy sniffed.

"He'll be with his Mudblood mother soon...Lord Voldemort got him in the end, as it has to be, as it should be..." The young man - Voldemort? Was it possible? - turned his gaze to Neville. "And as for you."

Neville swallowed hard, his stomach dropping and his heart threatening to explode from his chest.

He was going to die. It didn't matter that the young man - who claimed to be Voldemort - had no wand, Neville was going to die, right here. A sob escaped his chest in fear, and he clutched Harry to him as though his friend's corpse could protect him.

Except...there was a pulse. Neville froze, then lowered his friend's body and gazed at it in wonder.

"Get away, bird," Voldemort said suddenly. "Get out of here!" The bird looked directly at him, gave a cry, then launched itself into the air. Neville gaped at Harry's upper arm, where a smear of blood marked where the horrible wound had been. How...?

"It makes no difference," the young Voldemort's voice said very close by. Neville jumped, startled, and began to cry out in protest as the young Voldemort wrenched his wand away from him. "It won't take much to kill two wounded children near death..." He raised the wand, opened his mouth -

In a flurry of red feathers, the bird soared overhead and dropped something into Neville's lap - a small brown book - the diary Harry had told him about, the diary of Tom Riddle -

There was a dreadful pause. Neville watched the young Voldemort's face blanch as he registered what Neville now held. A sudden bolt of understanding shot through him, shocking him into an instant of wakefulness and he grasped the basilisk fang he'd torn from Harry's arm and, without really knowing why, stabbed it as hard as he could into the heart of the diary.

His jaw dropped as the book itself began to scream and bleed - no, it wasn't bleeding...it was ink, ink spilling out of the diary as though from a faucet, the young Voldemort screaming in a horrible minor offset and flailing...

The wand dropped to the floor with a loud clatter, splashing the water and ink, and he was gone.

It was silent, but for the forlorn dripping of ink still squeezing itself from the diary. A hole was burned straight through it, the venom of the basilisk fang still sizzling on the leather cover.

Harry coughed, and all other thoughts fled from Neville's head. "Harry!" he exclaimed.

Harry blinked hard. "Neville?" he asked, incredulous. His eyes seemed to take in the diary, the fang, the ink all around them. "What just happened?"

"I think," Neville said slowly, "I just saved your life. And don't ask me how because I haven't a bloody clue." Suddenly his head pounded with a vengeance. "I think I'll pass out now," he added, and promptly did just that.

* * *

Beds in hospitals are meant for enough comfort so one could sleep, but not so comfortable that one wants to hang around and take their time getting well. Neville had decided on this fact of life during his second visit to the hospital wing in his first year, and saw no need to revise his theory. He opened his eyes as his bed shifted. Harry was sitting on the end, grinning.

"About time you woke up. How are you feeling?"

Neville considered the question, then glanced around the hospital wing.

"We're alone," Harry confirmed.

"Well then," Neville said, propping himself up on his elbows. "I've got a head full of memories that I'm pretty sure are mine going all the way through fourth year. Fourth year! And I don't remember actually doing any of it, and yet I do." Neville shook his head. "Oh. And I have a headache."

Harry grinned and patted Neville's hand. "Thanks, by the way."

"What for?"

"Saving my life." Harry winced. "That sounded a bit dramatic, didn't it?" Neville nodded. "True, though." Neville nodded again and squeezed Harry's hand. Harry smiled and squeezed back. "Did you mean what you said? You'd never forsake me? I've always got you?"

"I wasn't aware you were awake and listening," Neville said politely. "But yes." He smiled. "Seems odd that we were nearly strangers just a few days ago, about to head out for lunch to share the more socially acceptable points of interest in our lives."

"I think that's how these things always start out," Harry said. "Except with less mucking about with time and causality." He stood up, stretched, and plopped down on the bed next to Neville's. "Madam Pomfrey says one more night in the hospital wing should do us. I get the feeling we'll be out of here as soon as we fall asleep, don't you?"

Neville chuckled softly. "You could say that. Good night, Harry."


	6. Interference

"Harry," Neville whispered into the silence of the dormitory. "You still awake?"

"Yeah."

"And...damn, we need some sort of code word."

"Yes, I currently possess my full range of memories."

"Hmm, it's a bit long..."

"Funny. Common room?"

"Was about to suggest it myself."

Two shadows made their way down the twisting stairs of the dormitory, emerging silently into the common room.

"You have the flask?" Neville asked, reaching his hand out. Harry nodded and drew it from the pocket of his dressing gown. Neville pulled the stopper and studied the lines that emerged.

"As I suspected it'd be," he said with satisfaction. "Fourth year. Looks like the middle of it. Odd that it didn't just deposit us straight into whatever we need to do this time, though."

Harry yawned. "Maybe we have to actually look at this one before we can do anything," he said, stretching like a cat. "Let me tell you, it's awesome to not have back pain anymore."

"Amen," Neville agreed absently, trailing his fingers along the lines hovering in the air. "Have I mentioned how weird it is to read these things and remember what happened, but logically know I didn't do any of it, except that I did because I remember doing it?"

Harry blinked. "Come again?"

"Right here," Neville said. "C'mere." He grabbed Harry by the wrist and pulled him to a standing position, placing Harry's fingers over a point on the line. "All of third year, during everything having to do with Sirius Black. Do you remember being the only one who defended me when the passwords were stolen?"

Harry wrinkled his brow. "Yes."

"But do you remember actually doing it?"

"...yes..."

"But we just came from second year. We haven't lived through third year yet. But we did, because we remember it."

Harry stared at the lines, eyes unfocused. "That's fucked up," he said finally.

"Exactly what I was getting at," Neville said, releasing Harry's wrist. "And you don't actually remember any of it until you think about it, so all these weird things pop out at you and you feel like you should be surprised, but you're not because you did them." He shook his head. "Time's having a jolly old time screwing with our heads," he concluded as he placed his fingers back on the timelines.

"Good way to get to know someone, though," Harry commented. "I don't think I ever was ever this close to Ron or Hermione."

"Well, seeing as they're always throwing a strop for one reason or another, that friendship seems to happen in dollops," Neville said with a mischievous smile. He pointed at a point in the timeline. "Like right about here, Ron's still mad at you for putting your name in the goblet -"

"I did not put my name in that bloody goblet!"

" - and Hermione's...well, she's not siding with him, but as you've got me and Ron's got no one, she's spending loads more time with him. Doesn't really open the situation up to group hugs and campfires."

"I'll bet," Harry grumbled.

"And...all right, that's a bit odd," Neville said, leaning closer. "Apparently right here is going to be our next stop, but I actually have no idea what it is."

"Oh?" Harry asked, sitting up to get a better vantage point.

"It's a weird sort of...knot, with your line and mine." Neville shrugged. "I guess we'll figure out what it is eventually."

"Will we have to do it with no sleep?" Harry asked plaintively. "Because if Time's listening, I'd really like to have a nap. I've never actually been able to get to sleep before we're tossed into another scenario and it's getting old, even if the body I'm in isn't actually tired."

"I'll send a memo," Neville said drily, making to replace the stopped in the flask, but he stopped. "Can I keep this? You can't read them anyway, and I've got some spare time right now..."

"Be my guest," Harry said, not bothering to suppress another yawn. "Mind if I try to doze off? Maybe if one of us is still awake it won't dump us elsewhere before I get five minutes of sleep..."

"Go for it," Neville said, drawing his wand from his sleeve. "I'll wake you if I find anything."

Harry grunted and closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the couch.

It didn't seem to be more than half a minute before someone began shaking his shoulder, though based on the ache in his shoulder, it had been much longer. Harry groaned.

"You've got to be kidding me," he said as he grudgingly opened his eyes. They widened as he took in the scene around him.

The silk-thin threads of the timelines wrapped around the common room, dancing slightly in a breeze it seemed only they could feel. Neville stepped back, his face grave.

"You need to see this," he said in a low voice. He offered his hand and Harry took it, leveraging himself off the couch. Neville led him to where the timelines began fraying and lost their brilliant sheen. "Here." He pointed a shaking finger at one of the shorter lines branching from Harry's, holding Harry's fingers up to it with his other hand.

Harry got a fleeting glimpse of a smiling, young female face with red-brown hair. "Lily," he gasped. "But she's older."

Neville nodded. "The lines here are in our future," he said gravely. "Couple of years after what we've lived. That's why they're not clear, like the parts of the lines we've already experienced. I can only get vague impressions...they're not memories yet...but..." Neville's face took on an unimaginable sadness. "Harry, look at her line."

Harry blinked and looked at the line. "It's shorter," he said. "It ends before..." he trailed off as a horrible realization began to unfurl in his mind. He turned to Neville, who looked so miserable with sympathy that it made Harry want to drop to his knees.

"I'm sorry, Harry," Neville said simply. "I...debated whether I should tell you or not."

"We can keep it from happening," Harry said, staring at the too-short line. "We can save her. That's part of what we're doing, changing things. We can save her."

"I'll do everything I can," Neville promised. "I swear it."

"Good, then," Harry said, pushing his glasses up. "It's not an issue. We'll change it so that she doesn't..." He shook his head. "We'll change it."

"Yes," Neville said. "We will. And I'll spend some time trying to figure out how." He gave Harry's hand a squeeze, then offered a small smile. "Shall we get to bed so that we can get on with saving the world?"

"The world can go to hell," Harry said grimly. "It's my daughter we're saving now."

* * *

Harry stormed into the Gryffindor common room and flung himself dramatically onto the couch next to Ron. At the nearby table, Neville and Hermione looked up from their parchment and quills.

"What's got you off, then?" Ron asked, scooting over on the couch.

"I wasn't even going to _go_ to the Yule Ball," Harry moaned. "Now McGonagall says I have to - and I have to ask someone to it - and I have to dance and I don't rightly now how -"

"I can help you with that last one," Neville said as he dipped his quill. He looked up to see Ron, Hermione, and Harry all gawking at him. "Gran thought I might lose some of my clumsiness if I took dance lessons," he said, a slow blush moving up his neck to his cheeks. "Three months of ballroom dance lessons, in fact. She decided I was a lost cause." He looked back down at his parchment, his ears red. "But I could teach you the steps, at least. It's not hard."

"Erm, okay," Harry said, sitting up a bit straighter. For some reason, the notion set a small flutter through his stomach. "Brilliant."

"Will you teach us too?" Ron asked.

"Oh, did you suddenly decide you were going to ask someone then?" Hermione said with an acid tone as her eyes darted between Harry and Neville. "Because until three minutes ago you didn't need to learn to dance."

"Well, if my mates are going -" Ron began to protest. If Hermione's eyes could have growled, they would have.

"I'm sure Harry doesn't want an audience whilst learning to dance, wouldn't you agree, Ron?"

"Hermione, I don't really care -" Harry began, but then Hermione turned that glare onto Harry and he gulped. Neville looked slightly quizzical, but the blush hadn't dropped from his cheeks and if anything, he appeared more flustered than before.

"I don't mind teaching you two as well," he said to Hermione quietly, not noticeably shrinking away from her eyes. Harry was slightly jealous that he seemed to be immune to the death glare.

"I don't need to learn to dance," Hermione said loftily, "As I already know how. You really should teach Harry, though. Some private lessons might do him some good." If it was possible, Neville turned a shade redder.

Whatever Hermione was trying to force down their throats, Harry knew it was usually better to just do as she commanded rather than try to argue otherwise, and anyway, it looked as though Neville was about to eject steam from his ears. "I have free time this evening. We can start then," he said to Neville. Hermione smiled sweetly at him, and he exchanged a look with her that, he hoped, said "We will have words later."

He was right about that much, at least; as he gathered his books into his bag after Defense Against the Dark Arts that afternoon she grabbed his elbow. Harry looked over his shoulder to see that Neville and Ron had already left, Ron moaning about who he was going to ask to the ball.

"What?" he whispered.

"Neville," Hermione said matter-of-factly.

"What about him?" he responded nonchalantly. Hermione rolled her eyes.

"You're thick, but you're not stupid," she said. "I don't actually have to spell out 'what about Neville,' do I? Because I think that would embarrass us both a bit." Harry felt his ears begin to burn, and didn't answer. Hermione nodded in satisfaction. "Well, now that we've got that out of the way," she said, then threw her arms around him in a hug. Harry blinked in surprise. She let go and beamed at him, holding him at arm's length. "I'm so glad," she said happily. "It's brilliant that you've both finally realized it." Harry didn't seem to be able to do anything but blink. Hermione apparently was able to read whole volumes from them, however, because she continued, "Not that he's ever likely to admit it, nor you, even though it's really quite obvious -"

"Sorry," Harry said, glancing about the empty classroom, "but what's obvious?"

Hermione laughed. "You fancy each other."

"No I don't," Harry said quickly. "I mean, we don't." Realizing this was in direct opposition to the wordless admission Hermione had wrung out of him a few moments earlier, he gave up on words and just stood there, sputtering, as Hermione crossed her arms and looked at him with a knowing smile. Finally he stopped trying to deny things and turned to shove his books in his bag.

"And now we've got _that_ out of the way as well," Hermione said smugly, "What are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Harry said loudly, ignoring that he had bent his quill double under his ink bottle.

"You're not seriously going to just ignore it," Hermione said incredulously.

"There's nothing to ignore." Harry slung his bag over his shoulder. "I'm going to dinner. Are you coming?"

Hermione stamped her foot. "Boys are so stupid!"

"Yup," Harry said, turning his back on her. "That's us."

And he strode off before she could say anything else.

* * *

"Okay, so. I'll lead first, so you can see how it's done." Neville pointed at the wireless in the corner of the empty classroom with his wand and it began a lilting waltz. Neville looked back at Harry and swallowed. "When you're lead, you put one hand on your partner's back, kind of cupping the shoulder blade -" he did so, and Harry's stomach gave a leap - "and they'll put their hand resting on your shoulder. Go ahead, put your hand on my shoulder." Harry did. "And with your other hand, you're holding mine between us and off to the side. Too high - there."

Harry looked up. Somehow, Neville's eyes were a good four inches above his own. "When did you get so tall?"

"Weren't watching, were you?" Neville asked, cracking a smile. "Now. Listen to the music. Can you hear that rhythm there? The one, two, three?" Harry nodded. "Anytime you hear that triplet, it's a waltz. We'll be taking a step with every beat. As the lead, I step forward, heel first, on one, and you step back." He demonstrated; Harry stepped back and nearly tripped on the hem of his robe. "Now with your other foot, you're going to step and end with your feet a little less than shoulder-width apart - that's for the second beat - stay on the balls of your feet for beats two and three. Good. And for the last beat, you bring your feet together - right. You've completed one corner of a box - this is called the box step - and now with the second triplet, you're going to step forward while I step back...shoulder width apart again...and together." Neville's face shone with a wide smile as he dropped Harry's hand. "And that's pretty much all there is to it."

"That seems...overrated," Harry said.

"Well, that's just the basics. If you don't want to be walking in a box the whole song, you've got to add some things to it," Neville said. "Here, let's see if you can keep up with the music." He took Harry's hand and back again and counted off. "One two three, one two three, one two three, ready and go -"

Harry stumbled, then blushed. "And that makes it needlessly complicated." He stumbled again - apparently both dancing and talking was beyond him. A tiny spark of shame ignited in his chest - he hated being bad at something. It wasn't a feeling he was used to.

"You're just new," Neville said. He flicked his head to the side to get a stray bit of hair out of his eyes. "Just keep the pattern in your head - step, side, together - and you'll be fine."

"Can...we keep trying?" Harry asked.

Neville shrugged. "Sure." He reddened slightly. "D'you want to keep being the girl, or switch to lead?"

"Excuse me?"

"Well, it's just...the bloke tends to be the one who leads, yeah? Except you're kind of..."

"Titchy, yeah, I know," Harry said, shaking his head as he tried to make his feet behave. It sent him off-tempo and he stepped quickly to try and make it up, but just fell further behind. "Apparently you and Ron stole all my height while I was sleeping."

"Try not to talk, it's throwing you off," Neville advised. "Let's get the basic pattern down first, then we'll do the more complicated stuff."

Harry stared at his feet for several bars, then looked back up and realized he had no idea where he should be looking. "What am I supposed to be doing with my eyes?" he asked, slightly embarrassed.

"Depends. It's perfectly polite to look over the other person's left shoulder, especially in a dance where you change partners. If you asked someone to dance, though, she'll probably expect you to be looking at her."

It was a slightly odd experience. Even knowing Neville as well as he did, looking up at him while dancing made him want to smile and laugh nervously, but looking over Neville's shoulder seemed rude, somehow. And so he tilted his chin slightly up, making eye contact that felt almost bashful. Neville smiled, mirroring Harry's nerves, but didn't break his eyes away. The first several moments felt awkward, invasive...but as the nervous smiles faded slowly away, Harry found himself gazing almost seriously into Neville's eyes, their line of sight almost visible as a thread of tension. Harry discovered he was slightly short of breath and wasn't quite sure why.

The song ended, and Neville halted, but did not let go. They continued to stare at each other for a very long moment, Harry painfully aware of how close their faces were to one another, his heart beginning to beat just slightly faster...Neville's grip on his shoulder blade tightened just a fraction, and Harry tilted his head to one side ever so slightly as Neville made as though to lean down...

"Right," Neville said suddenly, dropping his hands and breaking the spell. Harry sucked in a breath that he hoped didn't sound too much like a gasp as he stepped away. They both very seriously scanned the walls around them for a few moments as the tension melted away.

"I think that's good for tonight," Harry said. "It's getting late, and...ah...History of Magic tomorrow morning, you know how it goes."

He was about to leave the room when colors swirled brightly through his head, making him weave on the spot with his hand on the doorknob. He gasped as his mind lurched, reconciling decades of memories coming back at once, then froze. He very, very slowly looked over his shoulder.

Neville was staring at him, mouth agape, hands hanging limply at his sides.

They both stared at each other in silence for a moment until another song came on the wireless, of a faster tempo. Without breaking eye contact, Neville jabbed his wand to the side and the wireless fell quiet.

"Interesting," was all Harry could come up with to say, but it seemed vastly inadequate. He licked his lips.

"Yes," Neville agreed. He took a deep, trembling breath, his brow knitting just slightly.

They continued to stare as though they'd never really seen one another before. Harry almost absently took stock of his reactions - quickened pulse, tight chest, clammy palms - and yes, there was that telltale heat that told him he was blushing - he wasn't sure what to do with any of it.

"Let's sleep on it," Neville suggested suddenly. "This...is a lot to process."

Harry nodded and wordlessly turned, leaving Neville alone in the empty classroom.


	7. Distinctions

The canopy of the four-poster bed was not very captivating when one has been staring at it for what seemed like hours. Harry had drawn the curtains as soon as he'd pulled his sheets over himself, in order to allow Neville the opportunity to pretend he thought Harry was asleep. Neville had apparently seized the opportunity, because some time ago Harry had heard him climb into bed himself.

After contemplating for a while, Harry had decided that "interesting" did not even begin to encompass the revelation of that evening.

He'd known, of course, where his particular sexual preferences lay; you don't make to to forty without realizing what does and doesn't turn you on, after all, especially with a wife as...adventurous...as Ginny. As he had been happily married when he'd come to terms with the fact that really, any naked body would do just fine to set him off, he'd never had the opportunity to fully explore that side of himself. He would have been fully prepared to write this night's incident off as a teenaged body reacting to the rather pleasing stimulus of close contact had it not been for the new stock of thrice-be-damned memories that came with it.

From what he could remember of the suddenly implanted memories, they'd avoided talking directly about anything for the entirety of fourth year. Neville had continued to teach Harry how to not trip over his feet, but they had concentrated very thoroughly on their footwork and technique, not speaking any words aside from what was necessary. Harry had ignored the stab of jealousy he had felt when he saw Neville dancing with Ginny at the Yule Ball, much as he was sure Neville had ignored the jealousy that had flashed across his own face when he first saw Harry and Parvati Patil walk into the Great Hall. When Harry had pulled Neville up from the bottom of the lake for the Second Task, both of them emerging dripping and exhilarated, they had pointedly sidestepped the fact that they couldn't keep their eyes off one another. It wasn't until Hermione - nosy, interfering, well-meaning Hermione - had sat them both down and scolded them for letting something as silly as mutual attraction for one another ruin their friendship like this that they had been forced to actually confront the elephant in the room. There had been a lot of stammering, a few awkward attempts at reassuring touches, and then the agreement that it was all purely physical and if they didn't set it aside as soon as possible they'd never be able to be friends again. If Harry had to guess, this was not exactly the result Hermione had been going for.

And then Harry had gone off, won the Third Task, witnessed Voldemort's return and was utterly useless company for the remainder of the school year, although he did remember Neville holding him in an oddly protective embrace while he had a bit of a cry at one point after waking from a particularly vivid night terror.

The memories came to him as naturally as though he had lived them, which, he supposed, he had - just not yet, chronologically speaking. The currents and eddies of time and causality did not bear thinking about at the moment, as he didn't have the brain power to consider more than one weighty problem at once.

After tossing it over in his mind for a time he sighed heavily, gave up on sleep as a bad job, and flicked his bed hangings to the side. He was not entirely surprised to see Neville sitting on the edge of his own bed, lost in thought. It was still early; Ron was doubtless in the common room wheedling Hermione to help him finish his homework, and who knew where Seamus and Dean were.

"Bit of a shock?" Neville asked with a weak smile. Harry responded with a quavering smile of his own and a shrug.

"Under the circumstances, I suppose not really," he said. He sat up, turning to sit on the edge of his bed facing Neville.

"It probably doesn't come as a surprise that I'm queer as a green galleon," Neville said quietly, "though it's not something I tend to bring up with just anyone. Particularly not anyone I'm not married to."

"I was going to ask how exactly that worked," Harry said, grateful for a conversation topic that wouldn't involve talking about the two of them. Neville shrugged.

"Right place, right time. Hannah and I reunited at the Leaky Cauldron, where she was landlady. We got to talking, then drinking, then talking some more. She wanted children but wasn't especially interested in men; I wanted a family but, well, wasn't equipped to produce one on my own. The situation worked out well. I live up at Hogwarts during the school year, she in Diagon Alley. We managed to have two beautiful daughters and while they're of an age to suspect that perhaps their mother and father are a tad different, our family is still a happy one, if I do say so myself." Neville sighed. "And I have to admit, having that family is a shield of sorts against the discrimination I'd otherwise face, as callous as it may be to hear myself say it."

Harry nodded slowly. "Ginny was the one who figured out I'd have a go at anyone with a pulse," he found himself saying. "My twenty-sixth birthday, she..." he felt himself begin to blush. "She brought home a new friend, shall we say," he continued, studying his hands. "A very handsome new friend. Nice shoulders. She told me to enjoy myself, if I'd only let her watch." He glanced up to see that Neville's eyebrows had shot straight up in amused disbelief. "Well, when your wife gives you something for your birthday, you have to at least pretend you like it." Neville barked out a laugh, and Harry grinned, suddenly much more relaxed. "Anyway, that was about the time that I finally admitted to myself what Ginny had known all along, and just...went with it."

The conversation fizzled. Harry found himself studying his hands again.

"So what do we do?" Neville asked. Harry looked up in surprise.

"I imagine we keep going," he said slowly. "The whole point is to change things, isn't it?"

"This is a big change," Neville pointed out. "I may have been carrying a torch for you the first time round, but it never went this far." Harry raised an eyebrow, and Neville's mouth twisted into a wry smile. "Please. Half the school, girls and blokes alike, had eyes for you at one point or another. I was no exception."

"Be that as it may," Harry said diplomatically, sidestepping the issue, "I'll change whatever I have to if it will keep my little girl from harm. Hell, I'll schtoink you in the middle of the Great Hall at tea if that's what it takes." Neville's eyes widened for a moment in a somewhat comical expression, and Harry almost laughed. Neville mock-scowled outrageously, then composed his features into a more peaceful expression.

"Appealing though the notion may be, I hardly think that will be necessary," he said evenly, dodging the playful punch Harry threw. He looked seriously at Harry then. "But no matter what happens, it doesn't change the fact we're friends first."

"Of course," Harry said. "Thick and thin."

They grinned at each other, then Harry turned to look over his shoulder as the door to the dormitory opened. Instead of Ron or Dean or Seamus, however, a brilliant white light shone from the staircase...

Harry groaned. "So much for sleep."

* * *

Harry glared at Ron, Hermione, and Neville in turn; they all seemed to shrink slightly. "So how come I had to stay with the Dursleys while you lot get to help out here?" he demanded, his voice growing louder. "Why d'you get to know what's going on, and I get left in the dark?"

"We don't!" Neville protested.

"Right," Ron agreed, "Mum won't let us anywhere near the meetings, we're not old enough -"

Everything that had been building in Harry for the past several weeks suddenly seemed to explode.

"SO YOU HAVEN'T BEEN TO MEETINGS! YOU'VE STILL BEEN HERE! YOU'VE STILL BEEN TOGETHER, WHILE I'M STUCK AT THE DURSLEYS FOR A SOLID MONTH! AND I'VE DEALT WITH MORE THAN YOU THREE COMBINED AND DUMBLEDORE KNOWS IT - PHILOSOPHER'S STONE, ANYONE? TOM RIDDLE? A BLOODY HORDE OF DEMENTORS?"

Neville had turned pale. Ron and Hermione shot frightened looks at each other.

"AND WHO HAD TO BATTLE DRAGONS AND SPHINXES AND EVERY OTHER FOUL THING LAST YEAR? AND THEN HAD TO WATCH HIM COME BACK, AND DUEL HIM AND ESCAPE? OH, THAT'S RIGHT, ME!"

Hermione looked close to tears, while Ron stood in disbelief, mouth hanging open.

"BUT WHY DO I HAVE ANY RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON? WHY SHOULD ANYONE EVEN BOTHER WITH ME?"

"We wanted to tell you -" Neville said falteringly, standing up from the bed to approach Harry. Harry rounded on him, shouting directly in his face.

"COULDN'T HAVE WANTED IT THAT BADLY, ELSE YOU'D HAVE DONE IT! BUT NO, YOU SWORE TO DUMBLEDORE -"

"But we did -"

"FOUR WEEKS I'VE BEEN STUCK AT THE DURSLEYS, NICKING MUGGLE PAPERS FROM RUBBISH BINS TO TRY AND SEE IF ANYTHING WAS HAPPENING -"

"But -"

"BEEN HAVING A REAL LAUGH, HAVEN'T YOU, HIDING AWAY HERE ALL TOGETHER KEEPING THINGS FROM ME -"

And Neville's fist connected firmly with Harry's cheekbone, hard enough to send Harry sprawling.

"Shut the hell up and listen," Neville said in a cold voice that didn't seem as though it could possibly belong to him.

Everyone in the room stared at him in shock. Harry gingerly touched his cheek, glaring angrily up at Neville.

"We've been locked up here for those same four weeks, knowing the entire time that you were going to be royally hacked off at us if we didn't tell you anything," Neville said, rubbing his knuckles. "I've tried to send you an owl five different times, but they wouldn't let me." He turned his glare to Ron and Hermione. "Worried I'd be writing in code or some rubbish."

"Neville - you _were_ trying to write in code -" Hermione said. Neville ignored her.

"I've been going stir crazy, not allowed to leave, just because my parents were in the Order last time and that makes me a target. But they won't tell me anything either. Don't get to hear from my best friend - who nearly died a month ago, by the way, don't think I don't realize that - I don't get to do damn near anything, and Gran rubs it in every chance she gets that I'm not old enough to join the order with her and actually _do_ something. And then I hear that my best friend's been attacked by bloody dementors and no one will tell me flat out if you're safe or not, or if they're doing anything else to protect you, or if you've really been expelled, and then you just show up here and start accusing me of having a laugh the whole time? Saying I never really wanted to talk to you?" He shook out his hand; the knuckles were bleeding from where they'd split. "Sometimes you are the absolute stupidest person I know, and I've met your cousin."

Harry felt he should have something to say to that, but the shock of Neville's sudden vehemence had dissipated his anger quite thoroughly. Still on his back on the floor, he stared up at his friends; Hermione was glancing back and forth between the two of them, and Ron looked more bewildered than Harry had ever seen him.

Neville suddenly thrust his other hand out; Harry flinched before realizing that it was an offer to help him off the floor. He grasped it and Neville pulled him to his feet, then drew him into a rough hug.

"Good to see you," he said gruffly. "Sorry about the face."

Despite himself, Harry grinned. "Good to see you too, Neville."

"You're both mental," Hermione said in wonder. "One hundred percent mental."

* * *

Ron was snoring when Neville prodded Harry in the shoulder, one finger over his lips as though the requirement for silence was not apparent. Harry grabbed his glasses from the bedside table and followed Neville to one of the empty rooms at Grimmauld Place that had been somewhat decontaminated. After he quietly shut the door behind him, Neville turned and sighed heavily.

"Criminy, Harry, I'm sorry," he said.

"What?" Harry asked. "Oh, this." He prodded the bruise on his cheek gently, then shrugged. "Can't say I didn't deserve it, really. What I'm confused about is...why that event? Seems rather insignificant."

"You think so?" Neville asked shrewdly. "You think our first fight is insignificant?"

Harry furrowed his brow. "That was our first fight, wasn't it?" he asked with awe. "Blimey, four years of knowing each other and we hadn't had a row?"

"You're just used to not speaking to either Ron or Hermione every other month," Neville pointed out. "You and I, though - bosom buddies."

"Is that why you helped me up after nearly knocking my teeth clean out?"

"A bit," Neville admitted, "But also because you looked kind of pathetic there on the floor. And it's really hard to actually stay mad at you for long."

"It's my bottomless well of teenage charisma," Harry said expansively.

"Right. Fat chance." Neville shook his head and laughed. "Anyway. Interesting times, now, yeah?"

Harry nodded. "Apparently your Gran's in the Order."

"Oh, she was before - she was just off to the side. Never even told me about it, not until she came to Hogwarts that last night for the battle. She's more involved this time...probably because of you and I being mates, you know." Neville reached into his pocket and drew out the flask of timelines, unstoppering it. "I'm going to take a gander, try to figure out what's next. The green ones are hard to read, and the white ones in our future are practically impossible, but hopefully I'll actually have some time tonight..." He paused. "Is it just me...or is it more difficult now to remember how things were before? Like it's so different now that what came before is hard to bring up?"

Harry paused to consider. "Yes," he said after a moment of staring off into space. "It is." For some reason the notion chilled him. "I thought Dumbledore said we'd remember everything."

"Maybe Dumbledore doesn't know everything," Neville suggested. "Shocking, I know."

"Maybe we're not doing it right," Harry fretted. Neville shook his head.

"I don't think we'd be allowed to do it wrong. Maybe it's because we're doing it exactly right, and we don't need the old memories for reference anymore."

The idea stirred a slight panic in Harry's chest. "But - I want to remember the way it actually happened," he said uselessly.

"Harry, this _is_ the way it actually happened," Neville reminded him. "The way we lived it before is the falsehood now."

Harry found the prospect profoundly disturbing, and he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed to think about it while Neville contemplated the lines in the air. After a few moments Neville glanced over.

"Be honest - would you have it any other way than the way it is?"

Harry considered for a moment, and surprised himself with the result. "I suppose not."

"Well, there you go then." Neville waved a hand at him. "Go to sleep. I hear you complain one more time about not getting any sleep and I'll hex you. I'll let you know if I find anything important."


	8. Bothersome

Harry stood with his arms wrapped around himself as though he were cold, staring numbly at the walls of Dumbledore's office. Guilt and loathing seethed within him and he felt he would be ill with it; never before had he wished so heartily that he could be anyone other than himself...

The flames in the fireplace leaped and glowed green, startling Harry out of his reverie. He backed away from the fireplace and watched as Dumbledore unfolded himself from the flames, followed closely by...

"Neville?" Harry asked in dull disbelief. Neville was holding a blooded handkerchief to his nose, and had made some attempts at wiping blood from his face and neck where it had dried.

"Mr. Longbottom adamantly refused to be escorted to the hospital wing. He demanded that he be brought to you immediately." Dumbledore did not look at Harry; rather, he strode over to Fawkes's perch, reached inside his robes, and withdrew the tiny, featherless phoenix from an inner fold, depositing the hatchling in the ashes beneath the perch. "You will be pleased to hear that none of your fellow students will suffer permanent harm from tonight's events."

Harry tried to acknowledge that fact and be glad about it, but his misery was almost a physical thing now, a hum that he couldn't expel from his ears. He barely even noticed Neville coming up behind him and rubbing a hand on his back in what was clearly meant to be a soothing gesture.

"Madam Pomfrey is patching everyone up as we speak," Dumbledore continued. "Ms Tonks may require some time at St Mungo's, but a full recovery is expected."

Harry nodded.

"In fact, I would dare say that due to his refusal to accept healing, Mr. Longbottom here currently has the worst of it," Dumbledore added in that maddeningly calm voice.

"Actually, Professor, I'd say Sirius has the worst of it," Harry said in a horrible voice. He could almost feel Neville wince behind him. Dumbledore bowed his head sadly.

"I know how you are feeling, Harry," he began.

"No you don't," Harry interrupted in that same raw voice. Neville stepped around Harry then, grabbing Harry by both forearms, ignoring the bloody handkerchief in one hand.

"I do," he said in a low voice, looking very seriously at Harry.

"STOP IT!" Harry bellowed, jerking out of Neville's grip and turning his back on him and Dumbledore. He rubbed his forearms where Neville had held him, breathing heavily.

"There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry," Dumbledore said behind him. "In fact, that you can feel pain this keenly is your greatest strength."

Harry's hands made themselves into fists, as though fists could contain the white-hot anger that churned his stomach.

"My greatest strength? You haven't got a clue...no idea..." Words spun through his head, connecting to unformed thoughts and making them impossible to say. He fell into a seething silence.

"Then tell me," Dumbledore said calmly.

"No! I don't want to talk about it -"

"Harry, this suffering proves that you are a man! Pain and grief at loss is part of being human -"

"THEN I DON'T WANT TO BE HUMAN!" Harry exploded, his rage bubbling over and filling him with boiling vitriol. It roiled, seeking an outlet, and he grasped one of the delicate silver instruments and threw it as hard as he could against the far wall, where it shattered into a hundred tiny shining pieces.

"Harry!" Neville exclaimed, moving as though to grab hold of him. He faltered as Harry snarled at him, drawing back as though he had been burned.

"I DON'T CARE!" Harry yelled, grabbing the closest object to him - a lunascope, some tiny sane portion of his mind noted - and throwing it into the fireplace, narrowly missing Neville. "I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE ANYMORE, I DON'T WANT TO SEE ANY MORE, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT ALL TO END, I DON'T CARE -"

"You do care," Dumbledore said sadly. "You care so much you feel as though you're being ripped to pieces. Please trust me when I say I understand."

"NO! I _DON'T_ CARE!" Harry bellowed, so loudly it hurt his throat. He suddenly felt like a trapped animal, and stalked over to the door, shouldering Neville out of the way as he went.

"Harry," Neville said as he passed.

"JUST GET OUT OF HERE!" Harry yelled, his voice breaking. "GO!"

"No." Neville took a step and put himself between Harry and the door.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" Harry drew his fist back. Neville stood calmly.

"Punch me if you want," he said, looking Harry square in the eye. "I'm not leaving you. Not like this."

Harry screwed up his face against the roaring sobs that were beating at his chest, demanding an outlet now that words couldn't possibly do.

"Harry," Dumbledore said gently, "I would like you to sit down and listen to me. You are not nearly as angry with me as you should be, and I wish to explain myself and my actions which led to the events of this evening."

Harry felt his strength drain out of him like water from a sieve, his rage spent and no longer able to sustain him. He suddenly did want to sit down, very much. He numbly allowed Neville to lead him to one of the chairs in front of Dumbledore's desk and sat, staring into middle space and paying little attention as Neville took the chair next to his and did not release his hand, but continued to hold it.

Harry knew that the glazed expression he wore was extremely rude, as was the way he was only half-listening to Dumbledore's monologue, but he just couldn't bring himself to care. He thought he wished Neville would let go of his hand until he realized that his own grip was far more desperate than his friend's, and he realized that it was that grip that was anchoring him to reality at that moment. Now he didn't dare let go, lest he be washed away on Dumbledore's words to a place where he couldn't feel the anger and the guilt that he had every right to suffer.

Despite himself, he somehow became caught up in Dumbledore's narrative. Hearing him detail Harry's every year at Hogwarts, and how it related to why Dumbledore felt responsible for the evening, gave his anger something to latch onto, instead of swirling inside him without a target or reference.

His brain seemed to awaken as Dumbledore said the word "prophecy." He actually jerked slightly, which caused Neville to twitch in surprise.

"The prophecy's smashed," Harry said dully.

"I broke it," Neville said in a miserable tone. "I kicked it and...I'm sorry, I didn't know..."

"You did not destroy the prophecy itself, Neville," Dumbledore said kindly, "merely the record of the prophecy. The prophecy was made to somebody, and the person it was made to can and does recall it perfectly."

"Who?" Harry and Neville both asked together.

"Me," Dumbledore said simply. "On a wet winter night some sixteen years ago, at the Hog's Head, in a private room where I was interviewing a new applicant for the post of Divination professor. I was not inclined to continue the study at Hogwarts, but the applicant was the descendant of a very gifted Seer, and I decided it would be polite to give her the benefit of the doubt. I am sorry to say I was unimpressed, and cut the interview as short as courtesy would allow.

"However, as I was leaving..." Dumbledore rose from his chair and walked to the black cabinet next to Fawkes's perch. Undoing a latch, he drew from the cabinet the basin in which Harry had first seen his father tormenting Snape, first discovered the complete truth about Neville's parents even before Neville himself was comfortable sharing... Dumbledore placed the Pensieve back upon his desk and raised his wand to his temple, extracting a thin gossamer thread of memory as he drew it away and placed it in the basin.

From the basin, a shawled, bespectacled figure rose up and revolved slowly. Harry felt a sharp pang of recognition, but he had only heard her use the hoarse, sharp tones she spoke with once before.

 _"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies..."_

The room fell silent as Sibyll Trelawney receded back into the basin. It was a quiet thick enough to cut, and Harry felt that he was doing so as he cleared his throat.

"What...did all that mean?" he asked.

"It meant," Dumbledore said heavily, "that the one person who will have the only chance of defeating Lord Voldemort once and for all was born nearly sixteen years ago, at the end of July, to parents who had already defied Lord Voldemort three times and lived to tell the tale."

Harry felt as though he were suffocating slightly. "So...it means...me?"

Dumbledore did not answer immediately, but sat down slowly behind his desk, studying both Neville and Harry with a careful eye.

"Here is the odd thing," he said finally. "It may not have meant you at all. The prophecy could have applied to either of two wizard boys, both born that year at the end of July, both having parents who had escaped Lord Voldemort three times. One, of course, was you. The other..."

It was unnecessary for him to continue, as Neville had suddenly gone very rigid and pale, staring at Dumbledore in disbelief. His hand had tightened on Harry's to the point where Harry could no longer feel his fingers.

"It might not be me, then?" Harry found himself asking. "It might be..." He could not help but glance over at Neville, who had furrowed his brow and was now studying the carving on Dumbledore's desk with an air of profound astonishment.

"Ah, I am afraid that, without a doubt, the prophecy refers specifically to you, Harry," said Dumbledore. "You must take the entire prophecy into account. The final identifying factor of this boy is that Voldemort will 'mark him as his equal.' And so he did, that night when he came to kill you. He chose you, not Neville, as his greatest threat."

"Could he have chosen wrong?" Harry blurted, then felt his stomach churn as beside him, Neville drew in a very shaky breath.

"Voldemort had a choice between two boys from strong wizarding families," Dumbledore said. "He had to determine which was the greatest danger to him. Do notice, Harry, that despite his creed that only full-blooded wizards are of any value, he instead chose the boy born from the Muggle-born mother to be the one most likely referred to in the prophecy. He chose the boy with Muggle blood, one like himself, and in trying to kill you transferred powers to you that he did not intend - not only marking you as his equal, but facilitating that equality."

Harry felt Neville's grip on his hand relax infinitesimally, but his mind was reeling too quickly for him to spare much thought for his friend at the moment - he had to know -

"Why did he try to kill me as a baby?" he demanded. "Why not wait until Neville and I grew up, and decide then who was more dangerous?"

"That would likely have been more prudent," Dumbledore said, "Except that his information about the prophecy was incomplete. His informant did not hear the entire prophecy; he was removed from earshot before he had the chance to hear the half about marking as an equal. Consequently, he could not inform Lord Voldemort that to attack would be to bequeath the very power that would destroy him."

"But I don't have power like that!" Harry protested. "I don't have anything he doesn't have, I can't fight like him, I can't possess people, I -" he fell silent as Dumbledore held up his hand.

"In the Department of Mysteries," he said, "there is a room that is kept locked at all times, because the force kept and studied inside is so very powerful and wonderful and terrible. It is this power, Harry, that you - and I daresay Neville - possess in such quantities that Voldemort has none of, and is blinded to. It was this force that caused you to go after Sirius tonight, but also saved you from the possession of Voldemort, because he cannot bear to be touched by such a thing. In the end, Harry, it was your ability to love that made you more powerful than Voldemort."

Harry squeezed his eyes shut to stave off thinking about Sirius, about his hand in his godfather's death, about his guilt. "The end of the prophecy...neither can live..."

"While the other survives," Dumbledore finished.

"One of us has got to kill the other," Harry said flatly.

"Yes," Dumbledore responded.

Nobody in the office spoke for a very long time. Harry could hear the echoes of students making their way to the Great Hall for breakfast and he marveled that anyone could still want food, could still be happy, could neither know nor care that Sirius Black was dead and gone forever.

"I must say," Dumbledore said, causing both Neville and Harry to jump in surprise, "that I find it very curious that the two young men the prophecy could have referred to have managed to find themselves in each other's company, and be so close-knit, at that." A twinkle in his eye suggested that he knew exactly the kind of undercurrents present in the friendship between Harry and Neville, and Harry was surprised and somewhat grateful to find that he could still do something so normal as blush. "It seems to suggest to me that your fates may very well be intertwined, bound together on the evening of that prophecy. Imagine, what may have happened had you not met on that first train to Hogwarts?"

Harry looked over to Neville, who offered a small, crooked smile and squeezed Harry's hand. Despite the emotions still churning within him, Harry found himself returning that same small smile.

The notion did not bear thinking about.

* * *

Neville started pacing as soon as he and Harry had entered the empty common room that evening. Harry watched him, somewhat bemused.

"Something's got you a bit wound up," he said finally. Neville looked over.

"Were you ever planning on telling me?"

"Telling you what?" Harry asked. Neville made a small impatient sound.

"That I could have been the one Voldemort went after. That the prophecy could have referred to me."

"Oh." Harry's brow screwed up as he tried to remember. "I thought I had, when I told everyone who would listen about everything Snape had done, and why."

"No," Neville said with exaggerated slowness, "You didn't. Must have slipped your mind, little unimportant detail like that."

"I don't see why you're so worked up. The prophecy didn't refer to you. Would knowing have changed anything?"

"Obviously it does, if Time's gone out of its way to make sure I know this go round."

Harry cocked his head to the side. "I hadn't thought of it that way."

"Course not," Neville said in an odd tone. "You don't tend to think about things other than how they affect you. You're a little blind to the concept of collateral damage."

Harry's eyes narrowed. "Are you calling me self-centered?"

"Yeah, I suppose I am."

They glared at each other from opposite sides of the couch for a moment, then Neville broke the eye contact, running a hand through his hair and studying the couch cushions.

"I'm sorry. I'm just...still worked up from...from Sirius." He looked back up. "I'm sorry you had to live through it again. It's bad enough one time."

"Yeah, well," Harry shrugged and crossed his arms tightly across his chest. "Sorry I never told you. You're right, of course, you did have a right to know." He shook his head. "I thought I had."

"Well," Neville said thoughtfully, "I probably would have taken it badly anyway."

The conversation dwindled.

"I kind of wish I'd been able to keep my dad's wand this time," Neville said quietly. "I'd thought maybe...since things were different this time..."

Harry reached over and gave Neville's shoulder a squeeze. Neville's mouth twisted in a small smile and he absently reached up to clasp Harry's hand.

Harry froze, resisted the sudden urge to tear his hand away. It wasn't the first time Neville had performed that gesture - it had happened several times in the last few hours, even - but it was the first time it had happened when they were fully aware of what they were doing and where and when they were. Always before, it had been a part of whatever situation they were living, something that felt natural at the time, given their close friendship and only barely concealed feelings for one another. And now...

Harry swallowed. It felt natural now, too.

He didn't know why that should bother him, but the more curious thing was that a part of him didn't seem to be bothered at all.


	9. The Hardest Choice

Harry's eyes popped open as the dizzying array of colors wound through his mind. Was he never going to get used to the sensation of memories flooding back to where they belonged? It only happened every single night. He silently pulled on a dressing gown and padded down the stairs in bare feet to the common room.

The red and gold tapestries on the walls seemed to almost glow in the light from the dancing flames in the fireplace. Neville's head and shoulders were silhouetted against the flames on the couch as he leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs, chin resting on his fists, staring into the flames as though lost in thought. He didn't turn or move when Harry sat down next to him.

"Evening," Harry said in a low voice, pulling out his wand. " _Muffliato._ "

Neville's eyes didn't leave the fire. He chewed on his lip.

"Neville, what's bothering you?" Harry asked. Neville's eyes flicked to Harry for a moment before returning to their contemplation of the flames, and Harry thought he wasn't going to respond.

"I've puzzled out the timelines," was all he said. Harry just then noticed the flask with its dancing lights in the pocket of Neville's robe.

"Isn't that a good thing?" Harry asked slowly. "You look like the world's fallen apart."

"It did," Neville responded in an empty voice, his eyes staring into some point hundreds of miles within the fire. With a heavy sigh he wrenched his gaze from the fire and turned his head to face Harry, who was shocked to see how bloodshot Neville's eyes were. Had he been crying? How long had he been down here?

Before Harry could ask, Neville stood, pulled the flask out of his pocket and unstoppered it. The small window of the timeline that was their current residency - sometime in their sixth year - floated out and hung in the air, but Neville used his wand to coax the rest of the lines from the flask as well. They settled in the air like bright razor-thin cobwebs, circling the room several times, the dark green almost invisible in the low light.

Neville jabbed a finger at the white timelines near the end, before they began to fray. "This," he said hollowly. "Right here. It's yours."

"Right," Harry said, standing to study it. He swallowed. "It's where...where Lily dies."

Neville shook his head violently, his hand shaking slightly. "No. She's killed." He closed his eyes, as though the expression of shock on Harry's face pained him. Maybe it did. "Ginny kills her."

Harry didn't realize he had sat down heavily. "No," he said emphatically. "She doesn't. That's not...it's not possible. No."

"It's right here, plain as day," Neville said tonelessly, his eyes still closed. "Except you're right, it's not Ginny. She's possessed." He opened his eyes and traced a line Harry had never seen before, perhaps because it was so faint next to the bright white lines. "This here. It takes her around the same time you were confronting that necromancer in Bath." He traced it from Ginny's line back to its origination. "The necromancer in Bath was a decoy, the apprentice, to take you away from Ginny for long enough for the true necromancer, the master, to raise this shade and give it what it needed to possess your wife."

Harry felt frozen, breathing shallowly as if a deep breath would shatter him. Neville continued in his flat tone.

"The shade needed Ginny in particular, you see, because she was already vulnerable to him. He'd possessed her once before."

Harry felt as though he'd been doused in ice water. He took a shaky breath. Now he saw what was so fascinating about the fire; it provided something on which to focus so he could pretend he was not hearing these words.

"You were after the wrong necromancer. By the time you got home, Voldemort's shade was so deeply intrenched he was undetectable. He waited, biding his time, and as soon as his hold was absolute, he made her kill Lily." Neville wiped tears from his eyes with the cuff of his dressing gown. "And then, here," he said, his hand shaking, "You confront her. It's clear it wasn't an accident. But you didn't figure out she was possessed." His voice was shaking, now. "I don't think you mean to kill her," he said, almost in a whisper. "But..."

Harry very, very slowly lowered his face into his hands.

"And then," Neville said, drawing a deep breath as though about to dive, "You...you go mad. With grief. With guilt. Whatever. And you start...experimenting. Experimenting with time. You try to figure out how to make it all never have happened, to go back and find the right necromancer, but you..."

"I cause it," Harry found himself saying. "I make Time fall apart."

Neville nodded, his hand finally falling limply to his side.

The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. The white lights floated, not wavering in the draft that caused the fire to sputter.

"But we're stopping it," Harry said suddenly. "That's why we're here. We _do_ change it. We _do_ make it so it never happens." He stood up and looked wildly for his line in the green timeline.

"We do," Neville said simply.

"So...so that's good," Harry said desperately. "I get the right necromancer. Ginny doesn't...Lily doesn't die, and I don't..."

"You don't get the right necromancer."

The words seemed almost heavy.

"What?"

Neville swallowed, eyes closed, then traced the green line. "The next steps we take reverses all the damage that happens once and for all. It reverses because what we do in the next few steps means you never marry Ginny."

"I never...but..."

"You have James by her, but you never marry her. Another Auror gets wind of the master necromancer and what he's done, but too late to save Ginny. She's killed in the crossfire, years before the time when she'd kill Lily, if Lily had ever been born. James is sent to be raised by us."

Harry pressed his palms over his eyes, breathing raggedly. The room seemed to be spinning. "This is the sacrifice I have to make?" he demanded of no one. "I either destroy the world, or save it but never have my little girl, never have my family?"

"You will have a family," Neville pointed out. "Me and James."

"You and..." Something clicked into place in Harry's mind then, and he slowly brought his hands away from his face and looked at Neville, who met his gaze evenly. "What exactly do you mean by that?"

"Please," Neville said. "You're not an idiot, Harry. You know perfectly well that the decision that we were just going to be friends was fiction. You know what's been building for the last several years."

"Can't say that I do, actually," Harry said in a dangerous tone. Neville made an exasperated sound.

"Don't be daft! You can't ignore what's right in front of you!"

"And where exactly do you see this?" Harry asked in a voice dripping with venom. "Your precious lines?"

"I'm not blind!" Neville retorted. "And, contrary to popular belief, I'm not a bleeding moron! I see it in your eyes every time you look at me, and what's more, I feel it right about here -" he thumped a fist into his chest - "every time I look at you! You and I both know how we're going to end up, even without bloody timelines!"

"You just want it to happen," Harry accused in a horrible voice he wasn't entirely sure was his. "You're using this teenaged drama to kickstart your ridiculous infatuation and you just want something to come of it -"

Neville brought both fists down on the back of the couch, his face contorted with rage. "GOD FUCKING _DAMMIT_ , HARRY!" he bellowed. "YOU THINK YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE MAKING A SACRIFICE? I LOSE MY FAMILY TOO! I LOSE EVERY. SINGLE. ONE OF THEM, AND I DON'T EVEN GET TO HAVE ONE OF THEM BACK WHEN WE FIX THE DAMN THING!"

Yells of sleepy surprise sounded from the dormitories; apparently the limits of _Muffliato's_ effectiveness had been reached. Harry looked at Neville with a mixture of anger and confusion before turning and stalking back up to the dormitory, shouldering past the other curious students who had emerged into the stairwell to see what was going on.

He lay fuming behind the curtains of his four-poster, not exactly knowing why. A small part of his mind observed that it was easier to be angry with Neville than to contemplate the horror of what would have been his future; he quashed it and balled his fists in his blankets. He could not wait for the morning to wipe the memories away again so he could just be sixteen with nothing to worry about but homework and Death Eaters. He already knew he could handle those.

* * *

Harry spun, his eyes wildly taking in the surroundings that hadn't grown around him, but were simply there. The hideous gold-striped wallpaper Ginny had insisted upon, the sage green rug with the white scrollwork, the oak frames on the family photos on the wall...

He was home.

Something very like relief flooded his chest and he felt like laughing. He leaned over the bannister of the landing to take in the several floors of his home, delighting in the familiarity of it. He was three floors up on the landing, which meant he was outside Lily's room. Light flooded in through the windows, casting striped shadows across -

He paused. He was standing behind the bannister, but the shadows were going right through him to the carpet below and behind him, and he did not cast a shadow himself. He traced a finger through some dust on one of the picture frames, and it left no trail. Perplexed, he studied the glass in front of the picture more closely, then a glint of red and gold caught his eye in the photograph and he changed his focus to the photograph himself.

It was of James, that much was clear, and the glint had been the sun reflecting off the Head Boy badge that he was displaying proudly on his chest. Harry's mouth dropped. James was only in his fourth year, he couldn't possibly...

Of course. This wasn't his time. And the photograph seemed to suggest it was the future, his future. In fact, he realized further, dust motes in the air, suspended in the sunbeams, were not moving lazily with the air currents. Carpet fibers were not bending beneath his feet. It would appear that not only was he glimpsing his future, he was in a very specific frozen moment in time as well. He couldn't directly affect anything here. Thus he couldn't cast a shadow, nor move dust on a picture.

Lily's door down the hallway was ajar. Something sent a spike of apprehension through his chest, and he licked his lips and began to slowly walk down the hall.

The door was not open very far, only a few inches. Harry tried to push it open more but it resisted as solidly as if it had been a stone wall. He angled himself to look through -

He was not able to stop the cry of anguish that erupted from his throat.

Lily was crouched at the foot of her bed, hands pressed to her throat, red seeping through her fingers, an expression of horror and pain marring her features. Blood was already spattered on her lavender carpet and white bedspread, a handprint on one of the bed's posts testament to a failed effort to pull herself to standing. Her eyes were tight with pain, her mouth open in what was unmistakably a scream. And to the far edge, mostly obscured by the door, the end of a wand could be seen, a wand Harry would recognize anywhere as his wife's.

"Oh, god," Harry gasped, stumbling backward, his hand over his mouth. "Oh god, no..." His heart pounded in his chest, adrenaline making his mouth taste bitter and metallic. A great weight settled on his chest, and he struggled to breathe. He dared not blink, for closing his eyes brought up the ghastly image again...

"I am sorry you had to see this," a familiar voice said from the staircase.

Harry spun, breathing heavily, to face Dumbledore, who spread his hands in a helpless gesture.

"Why?" Harry choked. His eyes darted back to the door and he wrenched them away, lest he accidentally see the scene again.

"Because you have reached that cusp where a decision must be made," Dumbledore said sadly. "Do you go on and prevent this from happening, but never see your daughter or youngest son born nor marry your wife, or do you stop and know that in a few years, you will once again stumble upon this scene, knowing that you could have prevented it - but still having those precious few years of time before it happens?"

Tears burned Harry's eyes and he shook his head. "I can't," he said thickly, "I can't make a choice like that, I can't..."

"Then let us go forward further," Dumbledore said. "Do you go on and prevent Time from collapsing, or do you cause it to pause in perpetuity?"

"STOP!" Harry begged, sliding on his back down the wall and hugging his knees to his chest.

"You must _decide_ ," Dumbledore said heartlessly. Harry lifted his eyes, and a glimmer of understanding lit in his mind.

"You're not Dumbledore," he said hoarsely.

The figure that wasn't Dumbledore bowed his head. "It seemed prudent to appear to you in a form you would trust," it said.

"I won't like what you say no matter how you appear," Harry proclaimed. "You may as well show yourself as you are."

"You don't want me to do that. However, this may cause you less distress." There was no change from one form to the next; one moment Dumbledore stood before him, and the next, a vaguely humanoid form made of diamond bright light.

"Why show me this?" Harry demanded, gesturing toward Lily's bedroom door. "Are you mad?"

"I show you because you need to fully understand the decision you must make," the being that could only be Time said in an ethereal voice. "I need you to comprehend what each branch of decisions will lead to. Neville already understands, and he has made his choice. You, however, are a torrent of painful indecision that eats you from the inside, and the longer you do not choose, the harder it will be to make a choice, until I cannot continue either way."

"I lose Lily no matter what I choose," Harry choked out. "And Ginny."

"You speak correctly," Time said. "You also will never know the grandchildren Albus would have had, if I had been allowed to continue past your meddling. That is something you will never know, Harry Potter, and by your own hand, should you choose one branch."

A sob broke free of Harry's chest and he touched his forehead to his knees. "And if I choose the other?"

"James grows up without a mother, but still knows what it is to have a loving family. You never have a daughter or second son. But you know peace, as much as mortals can know peace. What is more, I continue." The figure made a gesture that could almost be a shrug. "It matters not to me which path you choose. I exist outside your linear concept, and cannot ever begin or end. Beginnings and endings are the workings of a mortal mind."

Harry closed his eyes. "Why can't I change this?" he asked plaintively. "I've changed so many other things, big things...why can't I stop this?"

"Because this has nothing to do with your actions. All else was able to be changed because the events unfolded as they would have, as they should have, had one single event happened as it should. The 'big things' you have changed started with a single small thing, building momentum. There is no such small thing that will both prevent this and preserve your life as you know it."

Harry swallowed. "Do I have to decide now?"

"You may stay within this construct until you have made your decision, but a decision must be made before you can proceed."

Harry quailed. "It has to be this place? With...that?" He jerked his head toward the door.

And he was suddenly sitting in his chair, in his office at the Ministry of Magic. Parchment was stacked in neat piles upon the desk, and several memos were frozen in midair above his head.

"You have made many difficult decisions in this locale," Time's voice registered from nowhere. "Is it more fitting?"

"Yes," Harry said with profound gratitude. "Thank you."

"You may take all the time you need."

Harry glanced around. "How do I let you know when I've chosen?"

"You needn't. I will know."

And even though Time hadn't actually been there, he somehow knew he was alone.

He propped his elbows on the desk and lowered his face into his hands, willing the tears in his eyes to go back to where they came from.

Logically, he knew exactly what he had to do. Logically, there was no argument. And yet, committing himself to that was harder than anything he'd ever had to do. Having made the decision in the past, he knew for a fact that choosing to die so that others could live was a much easier decision than the one he made now.

It was unfair to say he had a favorite child, but very apt; he doted on Lily outrageously. His daughter, his beautiful little girl - not so little anymore, of course, but his little girl all the same - how could he never know her? What was more, how could he choose to create a reality in which she simply did not exist, even if the alternative was -

Then, it struck him, so clearly that he was amazed it had not occurred to him earlier.

He never, ever wanted to see Lily like that again, never wanted her to ever know that kind of pain and terror, and no price was too high to ensure that.

His heart heavy, but steeled with determination, Harry picked up the family photo he kept on his desk. Ginny, Lily, James, Albus, and himself smiled and waved up at him.

"I love you so much," he told his children and wife, his voice breaking on the last word. "All of you." His hand began to shake and he closed his eyes tightly and clenched his jaw, tears running down his cheeks. He swallowed. "Goodbye."

* * *

He opened his eyes, and was not surprised to find himself seated on the edge of his bed in the dormitory, across from Neville, sitting in a mirror image to him. Neville opened his mouth as though to ask a question, but nothing came out.

Harry nodded, once, then reached out a shaking hand. Neville grasped it with both of his, and the look they exchanged spoke more than words ever could. It spoke of terrible loss, of unspeakable sacrifice, of sorrow and despair - but also of a tiny glimmer of hope for a new future, an echo of anticipation, and, yes, a shadow of satisfaction.

The last thing Harry saw before the brilliant white light became too bright was Neville's eyes.


	10. Beginning of the End

They stood in silence for a while, Neville with an arm around Harry's shoulders to keep himself upright despite his injuries. The lake was tranquil, the sky clear; it did not seem like a day for a funeral.

"I'm not coming back to Hogwarts, even if it does reopen," Harry said then.

He had been expecting the wide-eyed stares, and even Ron's jaw dropping. He had not expected Neville's sad nod, or Hermione's next words.

"I knew you weren't going to," she said simply. "But...where will you go?"

Harry stared off into the distance, trying to think. "I've got to go back to the Dursleys, at least until I'm seventeen. It's safe for me there until then. And then...I think I'd like to go back to where I was born. Where my parents were buried. It's where everything started, and if I'm there...maybe I'll get an idea of how to finish it, too."

"And then?" Neville asked in a thick voice. Harry looked up at him, his chest feeling oddly constricted.

"There are still four horcruxes out there," he said. He gestured to Dumbledore's tomb on the other side of the lake. "He was teaching me about them, what they might be, where I might find them. They need to be found and destroyed before I can..." he took a deep breath. "I'm going to be the one to kill him. I have to be. You could say it's in my blood, but it goes deeper than that. I'm going to find the four horcruxes, and then I'm going to go after the last bit of soul he's got, the one in his body. And if I see Snape along the way..." he gripped his wand so tightly a knuckle cracked.

"We'll come with you," Neville said suddenly. Ron and Hermione nodded. Harry gaped.

"What? No. Absolutely not."

"We'll come with you to your aunt and uncle's, and then we'll go where you go. That's how we do things," Ron said.

"You can't," Harry said, a small note of panic rising in his chest. Why hadn't he foreseen this? "Someone needs to be here at Hogwarts, someone needs to make sure everyone's protected. You're the best ones for that."

The other three looked at each other. Harry knew he'd hit a sore spot and ruthlessly pressed his advantage. "They're going to need someone. You can't think with Dumbledore gone that the school is going to stay the same."

These words melted into the summer air, and the four of them darted glances at one another, not sure what to say.

"I'll stay," Neville finally said in a small voice. Harry's eyebrows flew up in an expression of surprise that was mirrored on Hermione and Ron's faces. "You're right, someone's got to do it - and the Death Eaters have no reason to think I'm anything of a threat, nearly everyone still thinks I'm still a bit of a joke -"

"I'll hex anyone who says that," Harry said firmly. Neville smirked sadly.

"You'd have to hex most of Hogwarts, mate. At least the Slytherins. But they're the ones the Death Eaters will listen to. The Gryffindors know better, and Luna will bring the Ravenclaws round..." Neville seemed to be deflating as he looked down at Harry hopelessly.

Harry swallowed, giving Neville a hug from the side, suddenly feeling very empty. It hit him in full force, at that moment, that this may be one of the last times he would see Neville alive. The enormity of it, and of the possibilities they could have had, the moments they could have stolen, the time they could have had and had refused crashed down around him.

Ron cleared his throat. "We'll at least see you again once more, Neville," he said. Neville broke his gaze away from Harry and looked at Ron in confusion, an expression mimicked by Harry. "Bill and Fleur's wedding, remember? It's this summer, at our house. They'll go nutters if you don't come."

"That's right," Harry said, relief washing over him. He smiled. "We really shouldn't miss that, you know."

Neville's face melted into a relieved smile much like Harry's. "Gran likes weddings," he said inanely, and nodded. "We'll be there."

* * *

"Neville," Ginny said, "You're doing it again."

"Oh," Neville said, looking down at the shredded paper napkin in his lap. "Sorry." He plucked the napkin pieces from his legs and the floor and deposited them on the table with the other napkins he had inadvertently destroyed over the past half hour.

"It's hard, waiting," said Ginny. She glanced at the clock, where every hand that represented the Weasley family members was firmly pointed to "Mortal Peril," including her own. Neville bobbed a quick nod.

"I wish I could have gone," he said quietly. "I..." he trailed off. There didn't seem to be anything to say.

Mrs. Weasley paced through the living room of the Burrow again, fretting loudly. "Any minute now, oh I hope they're all right, the plan has to have worked..."

"They're fine, Mum," Ginny piped up, but Mrs. Weasley didn't seem to hear her as her path took her into the kitchen.

Neville checked his watch, then craned his neck to look at the Portkey landing site in the front yard for the eighth time that minute. As the minute hand crept infinitesimally slowly toward the arranged time for the first Portkey, he felt his heart beat more quickly.

"There's more to you and Harry than meets the eye, isn't there?" Ginny asked suddenly.

Neville felt as though someone had just tossed a bucket of water over him. "What?"

"You and Harry. You're more than just friends. You try to hide it, but..." Ginny twisted the tassel on the pillow she held in her lap. Neville licked his lips, stalling for something to say. The piercing look Ginny was giving him made it clear that subterfuge was out of the question.

"I...don't know," he said finally. "I don't know what we are. I wish sometimes...but...I don't know," he said again. He looked out the door again at the empty yard. "Sometimes it seems like we are. More than friends, I mean. But I think..."

"You're both scared," Ginny finished. Neville twisted his mouth slightly and nodded. "I had feelings for him once, you know," she continued, staring very intently at the tassel. "I still do, a bit. But..." she looked up. "I think he belongs with you."

Neville found it very hard to swallow all of a sudden. "I...Ginny, he..." he shook his head to try and clear it. "He doesn't want anyone right now," he said dismissively. "He's convinced anyone he cares about will be a target."

"I think that's just an excuse," Ginny said softly. "I think he doesn't want to hurt you or me by choosing." The binding of the tassel came loose and threads sprung over her hands in a frizzy ball. She made a small sound of exasperation and tossed the pillow back beside her on the couch. "I don't want to be your rival," she said firmly, her face set.

"We're not rivals," Neville protested. "We -"

Suddenly, blue light glowed in the yard. Mrs. Weasley seemed to materialize next to the door and she hurried out, Neville and Ginny in tow, conversation forgotten for the time being.

The blue light grew from a pinprick to something very small, spinning very fast, and then an empty, rusty oil can floated in midair for a moment before falling to the ground.

"That was Ron and Tonks's," Mrs. Weasley said, a little catch in her voice. "They're..."

Neville put an arm around Mrs. Weasley's shoulders. "They're fine," he said, trying to inject calmness into his voice. "They just missed the Portkey. They're all right."

"Of course they are, dear," Mrs. Weasley said, reaching up to pat his hand. "Don't you worry." Neville smiled slightly.

"There's another one," Ginny said anxiously as another point of blue light appeared. This one, too, was far too small - a very ratty trainer spun to a halt in the air before falling next to the oil can.

"Fred and Arthur's," Mrs. Weasley said faintly. She squeezed Neville's hand on her shoulder, and Neville squeezed back. His stomach felt very empty, but not from hunger; more like the bottom had fallen out of it and he was being consumed from the inside.

Another blue light appeared, this one much larger, and now the vast expanse that had been his empty middle was promptly filled with butterflies. The light spun and two figures, one so large it could only be Hagrid, the other smaller, touched down with a thud in the yard.

Neville's heart leapt into his chest and he found himself running forward. "Harry!" he cried. He stopped just short of a collision, skidding to a halt in front of a very disheveled-looking Harry. "You - are the real Harry, right?" he asked. Harry nodded once, pushing his glasses up with one finger. Neville knocked them askew again as he pulled Harry into a very enthusiastic embrace. "They wouldn't let me come, because I won't be of bloody age for three more days -"

"Where's everybody else?" Harry demanded, absently pushing Neville away and looking frantically around the yard. Neville felt as though he'd been punched in the gut, until he saw how wild Harry's eyes were as they landed on the used Portkeys. He looked to Mrs. Weasley with pain in his eyes. "The Death Eaters were waiting for us, they knew it was tonight, four of them were chasing us, and then Voldemort was there-" Neville could hear the plaintive undertone in Harry's voice, the plea that Mrs. Weasley please not blame him for all that had gone wrong...

Mrs. Weasley had gone pale, and she drew him into a hug as well. "Thank goodness you're all right. And you, Hagrid?"

"Would'n say no to a bit of restorative brandy," Hagrid said, sounding quite shaken. Mrs. Weasley nodded and rather than summoning it to her, she ducked into the house to retrieve it.

Harry looked between Ginny and Neville anxiously.

"Ron and Tonks were supposed to be back first," Ginny said, pointing to the oil can, "and then Dad and Fred. You're the first ones to get back."

"Death Eaters were already waiting for you?" Neville asked, his mouth feeling very dry. Harry nodded.

"They knew the plan had changed. It was all of them, and then Voldemort -"

Harry was interrupted by another flash of blue light behind them. Mrs. Weasley rushed out, thrusting a bottle of brandy at Hagrid as she stared intently at the incoming Portkey. Neville watched the two spinning figures grow larger, but something was wrong -

"GEORGE!" Mrs. Weasley cried. Lupin shoved George, bleeding profusely from the side of his head, into Mrs. Weasley's arms, who immediately began to half-carry him into the house, then rounded on Harry with his wand.

"Hey!" Neville protested, drawing his own wand uselessly and stepping between Harry and the advancing Lupin.

"Get out of the way, Neville," Lupin said, roughly shoving him to the side, pointing his wand at Harry's forehead. "What creature was in the tank in the corner the first time you ever came to my office?" he demanded of Harry.

"What are you on about?" Neville asked angrily. Lupin shot him a glare with a shocking amount of anger in it, and Neville fell silent.

"Tell me!" he said to Harry, taking a step closer.

"A - a grindylow!" Harry said, eyes wide. Lupin relaxed and lowered his wand, looking around at Neville and Ginny, who were both pale.

"Someone knew that we had changed the plan. I had to be sure you were actually Harry."

"What happened to George?" Harry asked, turning to stride toward the doorway, grabbing Neville's arm and steering him that way as well.

"His ear was cursed clean off. It was Snape that did him, his Sectumsempra curse..."

Too much was happening at once for Neville to keep track of. The breakneck pace of events, combined with too many people rushing about the Burrow, combined with too little sleep and food in the past several days due to nerves, combined with the almost dismissive way Harry was treating him, all closed in around him like a heavy blanket. He sank down onto a chair across from the couch where George was spread out, Mrs. Weasley attending to his wound, and simply stared into space as everything went on around him. People came and went, confusion and questions permeating the air, and it occurred to him that aside from Ginny and Harry, he was the only underage wizard present, and probably the most useless at this point in time.

Hermione sat down on the couch next to him. "You look glum," she commented. Neville shrugged, his eyes following Harry as he and Ginny went back out to the yard to wait for Bill and Fleur, the only two who hadn't yet made it back. Hermione followed his gaze and a flash of understanding shot through her eyes. "Ah," she said.

"No," Neville said, knowing what it must look like. "But..." he sighed. "He's changed, hasn't he? Just in the last few weeks."

Hermione nodded. "I think he's going to try and do a runner. That's why he's being so distant. He's not pleased that he's put everyone in danger tonight, even if we made him."

"Except me," Neville said bitterly. "I got to stay here, safe and sound."

"Do not start that again," Hermione scolded. "You've been going on about it all week. You've got the Trace right now, same as he has - you would have led the Ministry straight to us -"

"I know," Neville said quickly. He didn't need to have his current inadequacies enumerated to him yet again, and the argument about the Trace was the worst one, as it appeared Harry had gotten away with a great deal of underage magic unscathed. "It was still hard...waiting..."

Hermione gave his arm a squeeze. "I know," she said. Her gaze went past Neville to the door and her eyes widened. "Bill and Fleur are back," she said, standing quickly. Neville stood as well, turning toward the door.

Bill was supporting Fleur as she clung to his arm, burying her face in his shoulder.

"Mad-Eye's dead," Bill said gravely. "Mundungus took one look at Voldemort and Disapparated."

Hermione sat back down hard, as though her knees had given away. Neville continued to stand, numbly. He'd never been able to feel close to Mad-Eye, not even in the weeks when he'd stayed with him and Gran after Dumbledore died and Grimmauld Place was no longer safe...and now he never would...

Someone shoved a tumbler of firewhisky into his hands and he took it, staring down into the amber liquid.

"To Mad-Eye," someone intoned soberly.

"To Mad-Eye," the rest of the room murmured, and drank. Neville threw his back in one gulp, too shocked to even cough as the sharp liquor burned his throat. He stared into the bottom of the glass as though the answer to everything was there, though of course, it was just a glass.

Hermione prodded him in the shoulder. When he looked over, she nodded at the back door, through which Harry was slipping. Neville put his glass down on a table and started for the door himself.

"Harry," Hagrid said from the corner of the kitchen, "Where are you going?"

Harry looked trapped. "I've...I've got to go."

"Go?" Mrs. Weasley said. "You've just got here."

"I can't stay here," he said, rubbing his forehead in a gesture that always made Neville's blood run cold. "You're all in danger while I'm here. I'm not -"

"The whole point of tonight was to get you here safely," Mrs. Weasley said almost snappishly. "And thank goodness it worked. And the wedding is in only a few days, and we've arranged it so that everyone can be here and look after you -"

Neville winced. That was possibly the worst way she could have put it.

"If Voldemort finds out I'm here -"

"There are a dozen or more safe houses where you could be hidden, Harry," Mr. Weasley assured him. "He's got no way of knowing which one."

"And if he goes to each one? Killing every member of the Order to try and find me?" Harry demanded. "It's not _me_ I'm worried about!"

"We know that," Lupin said kindly. "But if you were to leave, it would make all our efforts rather pointless, and Voldemort would come anyway - unless, that is, you plan to let him know you're leaving."

"You're not goin' anywhere," Hagrid growled, "Not after all we wen' through ter get you here."

"Yeah, what about my bleeding ear?" George demanded jovially, propping himself up to look over the back of the couch.

They weren't handling this well at all. Neville almost wanted to wave his arms to get them all to stop.

"I know, and I'm sorry -"

"Mad-Eye wouldn't -"

"I KNOW!" Harry bellowed. Neville winced again. Yeah, he had seen that coming.

There was an awkward silence in which everyone looked at each other, trying to find someone who would say something comforting. Finally, Mrs. Weasley tried to give it a go.

"Where's Hedwig, Harry?" she asked kindly. "We can put her up with Pig, give her a bit of a nosh..."

Harry stared blankly, threw back the last of his firewhisky, and stepped outside through the kitchen door.

"What did I say?" Mrs. Weasley asked, tears in her voice.

"I'll go talk to him," Neville said, striding across the room. Ginny gave him a knowing look as he passed her, and he gave her a tiny nod.

Harry was kneeling on the ground in the garden, his face in his hands. Neville hurried his steps and came down on one knee next to him, a hand on his back. "Harry?" he asked. "Are you all right?"

Harry jerked and looked up, and Neville nearly sighed with relief. Not crying, then. He was never sure what to do on the rare occasions that Harry let himself go.

"Better than Ollivander, I'd wager," Harry responded shakily as he pushed himself to his feet. Neville did the same, noting Hermione and Ron leaving the house through the back door to join them.

"What exactly do you mean by that?" Neville asked, brushing a bit of sod off his knee.

He wished he hadn't asked. By the time Harry was done explaining what he had just seen, Neville felt ill, and Hermione and Ron didn't look much better.

"Don't let him in again," he said in a tone somewhere between a demand and a plea. "You can't. He's taking over everywhere else in the world, don't let him take you over too."

* * *

The days leading up to the wedding were a flurry of activity that Neville suspected had been entirely engineered by Mrs. Weasley to keep everyone separate and unable to talk about whatever Harry, Hermione, and Ron were planning. Neville felt his exclusion keenly, even though it had been his idea to begin with - as the one remaining member of the quartet at Hogwarts, he knew that he'd be the first targeted for information concerning their whereabouts, particularly Harry's. It was best for him to know absolutely nothing. The logic of it, and the necessity, didn't make him feel any better.

It was even worse when, on his birthday, Mrs. Weasley cornered him in the garden shed and begged him to talk sense into the other three, to get them to go back to Hogwarts that year.

"You can't stand by and let them abandon their education! _You're_ going back!" she said plaintively. Neville put down the sack of dragon manure he'd been carrying and brushed off his hands, carefully considering his answer.

"Hogwarts isn't going to be safe, especially not for Harry," he said finally. "Considering Hermione's a Muggle-born, it's not safe for her, either. And the Weasleys...sorry, Mrs. Weasley, but you're considered blood traitors." He hated seeing Mrs. Weasley flinch like that. "Fact is, I'm probably the only one within twenty miles of here who'd be considered harmless enough to attend school - I'm pureblood, my gran keeps her head down, and I'm not especially magically talented. At least, that's what they think," he added as an afterthought. He hesitated. "In fact, if they weren't making Hogwarts compulsory, I'd be begging you to keep Ginny home this year too."

He could see that the same thought had occurred to her by the way her lips tightened. "I'll keep an eye on her," he promised. "That's the main reason I'm going back. There are a lot of kids that will need a friendly eye on them."

Mrs. Weasley clenched her jaw and her eyes filled with tears. "You've grown up so much, Neville," she said in a tight voice. She patted him on the upper arm, one of the only parts of him that wasn't covered in dried fertilizer. She let out a little sigh and seemed to shake herself. "Anyway. Don't think I haven't forgotten - but yours and Harry's birthdays are so close together, and with the wedding and all, I was hoping you wouldn't be too put out if we combined the celebration?"

Neville sputtered. "I - honestly, Mrs. Weasley, I didn't expect - you don't have to - you're so busy -"

"Seventeen is too important to just let go by without noticing it," she insisted. "Harry tried to give me this same speech too, you know." She smiled and turned to leave. "Oh, and Neville? My rosebushes have never looked better. Thank you, dear...for everything."

"Of course."

* * *

The wedding was very much a wedding. Neville had concluded long ago that weddings are only really exciting to those in them and those related to those in them; while Neville liked Bill well enough, they weren't at all what one could call close.

The reception was nearly as boring, once Ron and Hermione had gotten up to dance and Neville had lost Harry in the crowd somewhere; he kept forgetting what the Polyjuice Potion had made Harry look like, and there were a great many people with red hair in the pavilion that he didn't recognize. It wouldn't do to try and approach the wrong one...especially not with the things that he needed to get off his chest before they went their separate ways for what could very well be the last time.

And with that thought, the reality of why he wasn't enjoying what was really a wonderful party came crashing down. Tomorrow morning, early, Harry would be leaving to go on what equated to a suicide mission. His every intention was to weaken and kill the most powerful Dark wizard of all time. And try as he might, Neville could not truly wrap his mind around the fact that he was not likely to see Harry alive again, but enough of him understood it - and understood that if he was going to tell Harry what he'd been trying to suppress for years, it had to be tonight.

Determination set his jaw and he rose from his chair.

"Where are you going?" Gran asked.

"I'm...I see Hermione on the dance floor," he said evasively. "I'm going to go see if I can cut in."

Having trapped himself in this falsehood, he headed to the dance floor, realizing that it actually probably was a very good idea - Hermione had an eye for all sorts of details he missed, she probably knew which of the many unrecognizable redheads was currently Harry.

"Mind if I steal you for a moment?" he asked, holding out his hand as Hermione turned away from Ron. Ron raised an eyebrow and Neville shrugged. Hermione giggled - actually giggled, what was the big deal with girls and dancing - and he took her hand, vastly grateful that the Foxtrot was one of the dances that had been beaten into his head several years ago.

"So you can dance," Hermione commented as Ron mumbled something about going to find drinks.

"I told you. Listen, I need to find Harry," he said seriously. Hermione picked up on his tone and squinted slightly at him, and then her eyes went wide.

"Oh god," she said, stopping still in the middle of the dance floor. "You're going to tell him, aren't you?"

Neville felt no surprise at all that she already knew. She'd known before he had known himself, years ago. "Yes. And it has to be tonight, before -"

"Of course it has to be tonight." Her tone clearly said there was no question about it. Hermione went up on her tiptoes to look around the pavilion. "There - oh, bollocks, he's with Ron's Auntie Muriel..." She bobbed back down to her normal height. "Listen, I'm going to go get him alone. Meet him over by the broom shed and if he's not there in five minutes, you'll be able to find his _pieces_ over by the broom shed in ten." She gave him an impulsive little hug, then slipped away.

Neville's heart started to pound as he watched her approach a pudgier redheaded boy at one of the tables and sit down, talking very rapidly. Harry-in-disguise glanced at Neville and he felt a spike of adrenaline -

At that moment, something large and silver bounded into the very center of the dance floor. Heads turned to look at it, and Neville backed slowly away.

The Patronus's mouth opened and it spoke with Kingsley's booming, slow voice:

 _"The Ministry has fallen. Scrimegeour is dead. They are coming."_

The next few minutes seemed to happen in disconnected fragments:

\- Screams issued from many guests; loud cracks of Disapparation began to echo across the pavilion.

\- Gran somehow pushed through the mass of people and grabbed Neville's elbow.

\- Neville could see Harry and Hermione searching frantically through the panicked crowd, Hermione screaming for Ron with tears running down her cheeks.

\- Ron collided with Hermione and Hermione grabbed hold of Harry's elbow.

\- Harry's eyes met Neville's for a split second before he disappeared with Ron and Hermione with a CRACK.

\- Gran said, "Time to go," and then Neville himself felt the terrible constriction of Apparation take hold.

As soon as he was able, he gasped a huge breath, falling to his knees as he lost his balance when the Apparation ended and he was in the living room of the house he grew up in. Slowly, what had just happened began to register in his mind, each image with crystal clarity. A great sense of loss wrenched his breath from him and he sagged to the side against the couch.

"Are you all right? What's the matter?" Gran demanded.

Neville ignored her, swallowing hard to get past the tears swimming in his eyes.

He'd never even gotten to say goodbye.


	11. Finally

Harry didn't quite know what to do now.

Granted, yes, he was used to lying awake at night, processing the day's events and going over the new memories they'd created. He was no stranger to that. But...always before he'd done it with Neville there. And now he was gone.

What was more, he was incredibly disconcerted that he couldn't seem to recall specifics from the life he had lived. He remembered basics, large bullet points, but he couldn't pinpoint whether Ginny's wedding gown had had sleeves or not, or when Ron and Hermione's daughter's birthday was, or dozens of other specifics. In fact, his memory was only really clear up to the point where he had cast his damning Patronus in Hogsmeade, and Aberforth had ushered them inside the Hog's Head. After that point, it was as though he had read a book about someone else's life and tried to apply it to himself. After that point was...it wasn't uncertainty. It just simply felt like...the unknown future.

It was troubling. He knew he defeated Voldemort - that point was not in limbo, it was just something that was _going_ to happen - but everything else was obscured by a distant haze. Obviously, there was still a choice that had to be made before anything else would become clear. And at that point, according to Neville, his entire life would switch to something completely different, and the life he remembered would no longer be even a faint possibility. Harry wished he knew what the choice would entail.

He rolled over on the skinny camp bed and huddled under the blanket. Even though he hadn't lived it in real time, he felt Neville's absence these past several months keenly. He wondered at that, but only for a few moments before he drifted off.

* * *

Harry and the newly-returned Ron managed to escape Hermione's piercing glares by pretending to go foraging for blackberries and mushrooms, which allowed them to talk somewhat more freely.

"Anyway, they nearly got Kingsley before we all realized that the name was jinxed - You-Know-Who knew that it was just the Order and you that would be saying the name outright, so they were using it to track us, yeah?"

Harry didn't really have anything to say to that. He lowered his voice with a glance in Hermione's direction. "You...haven't heard anything about the people at Hogwarts, have you? Ginny and Neville and the others?"

"No, mate," Ron said forlornly. "Nothing gets in nor out of the castle, except owls, and those are searched and censored, and you're not allowed to send too many, and they'll rewrite the letters, too - switch words around, that sort of thing, in case you're trying to write in cipher. Mum's not even really sure if it's Ginny writing the letters." Ron fell silent and began shredding a blackberry leaf.

"And Neville?" Harry asked, possibly a bit too urgently. "What about him?"

"No idea," Ron replied. "Mum hasn't got any letters from him, which is weird if you think about it, he always liked her, and Ginny hasn't mentioned him at all."

Harry's stomach fell. "So...he might be..."

Ron shrugged unhappily. "Hard to tell. He's not on the list of missing witches and wizards, not that I've heard...but I've missed a bunch of broadcasts. Maybe we could write his Gran? She might know."

"Maybe," Harry said hollowly. His stomach twisted as his mind refused to entertain the probability that the glimpse he'd had of Neville at the wedding before Disapparating was likely the last one he'd ever have.

* * *

"There's only one way in or out," Aberforth said gruffly. "The old passageways are guarded on both ends by dementors and Death Eaters. Guards patrolling everywhere in the castle. How you expect to get anything done in there is beyond me, but if you want to go get yourself killed, that's your lookout, eh? I wash my hands of it." Aberforth strode abruptly into the next room, leaving Ron, Hermione, and Harry to blink at each other.

Movement in the portrait made Harry look back at it. A tiny white dot appeared at the end of what looked to be a very long, dark tunnel, and now Ariana was walking back to them, growing bigger as she came closer.

There was someone with her. Someone taller, limping, with shaggy hair and torn clothing.

Ariana and the figure behind her drew closer, and Harry felt a sensation not unlike a large hand squeezing his chest. His heart started pounding hard enough that he was sure it would crack his ribs.

The frame of the portrait swung open like a door, and there he was, blinking in the brighter light, framed by the rough stone of a real tunnel behind him.

Harry drew a sharp breath, not sure if he'd even be able to say anything.

"Neville!" Hermione exclaimed, rushing forward to help him down from the mantelpiece. As Neville's feet touched the ground, his eyes sought out Harry. When they found him, his beaming smile was like the sun coming out.

Without being quite conscious of how he was managing to do it, Harry found himself striding quickly forward across the small room, catching Neville around the torso in a hearty embrace, trying to impart the enormous feeling in his chest that couldn't find words even if Harry had known them. Neville's arms wrapped around him and it was the most wonderful feeling in the world, causing the excitement in his chest to swell until Harry thought he must burst with it. He looked up into Neville's face, saw the tears shimmering in his eyes, saw the echo of a question there.

Harry knew the answer, had always known the answer, had known the answer for years but had never had the courage to say it.

He reached up, placed his hand firmly on the back of Neville's head, and drew his mouth down to meet his own with an urgency he hadn't known it was possible to feel. Without hesitation, Neville's hands went to the small of his back and the back of his neck, pulling Harry closer to him, fingers tangling in his hair and sending shivers down his spine. Their lips parted and tongues met, timid at first, but then growing more bold. Neville stiffened for just a moment in pain and Harry eased the pressure as he tasted a hint of saltiness of the blood from Neville's split lip and recalled that he had looked far from pristine as he had jumped down from the mantelpiece. It all rolled into one, the taste, the feel, the sensation of the kiss that had been waiting in the wings for so long.

Time had stopped, and there was only Neville, and nothing else mattered.

Neville ended the kiss first, drawing away slowly, almost reluctantly. Harry buried his face in Neville's shoulder, breathing just slightly heavily. "I thought you might be dead," he said softly. "I thought I'd never see you again."

"Me too," Neville said, stroking Harry's hair and drawing him close. "God, it's good to see you."

Ron cleared his throat behind them. "Uh. Anyone care to fill me in?"

There was the sound of Hermione smacking him soundly on the shoulder. "How dense can you _possibly_ be? Did you honestly not see this coming all these years?"

"Years?" Ron sounded startled. There was the sound of another smack, but Harry tuned out the whispered vituperations as he closed his eyes and settled into Neville's embrace. He felt like he could float there, uncaring, for hours, and would have, had Hermione not tapped him on the shoulder.

"I hate to interrupt," and she sounded like she truly meant it, "but there's still more we have to do tonight."

Harry's carefree happiness burst like a pricked soap bubble. "Right." He took a deep breath and stepped away, regret causing an almost tangible pain deep in his chest. His head still felt oddly light, and he shook it to try and settle it. "We have to get into the castle, Neville. Can you take us?"

Neville nodded, looking every bit as loopy and exhilarated as Harry felt. "Of course. Follow me."

* * *

Years later, perhaps, Harry would be able to recall with clarity every word he and Voldemort had exchanged as they circled one another in the Great Hall, would be able to come to grips with the self-sacrifice he had performed in the Forbidden Forest. Later, once events had solidified and the shock wore off, Neville would be able to tell the story of the Sword of Gryffindor and how he had stood toe-to-toe with Voldemort, endured the terrible flames that had been cast upon him, and killed the last and final horcrux. Other quills would tell the tales down the road; some of the people holding the quills had even been there.

Right now, however, the silence after Voldemort fell slowly backwards was deafening. Harry could feel every eye upon him, could feel the grain of the wood of the Elder Wand in his hand, hear the hearts of everyone in the Great Hall beating. But even heavy silence is a tremulous thing, and at once, as though by consensus, the people around him erupted with whoops and cheers and screams of delight and disbelief. The sunrise was a dazzling orange, triumphant, strong, as a wave of people began to break toward Harry.

The first to reach him was Neville, of course. Neville had always been there, first and foremost. Harry fended off the attentions of the rest of the students, staff, parents, and others by the simple expedient of grasping Neville's face firmly in both hands and kissing him soundly.

"Harry," Neville said in a low voice, blushing, as Harry pulled away for a moment to study Neville's face. "Everyone can see us."

"Mmm hmm," Harry agreed, kissing Neville again. "And you have no idea how much I don't care."

This tactic worked for only a few moments, however, as the crowd got over this latest shock - or lack of it; Professor McGonagall looked entirely too smug for the revelation to have come as a complete surprise, and Mrs. Weasley was dabbing tears from her eyes with the sleeves of her robe - and decided that they wanted to touch Harry Potter, the Chosen One, the one who had vanquished the Dark Lord, no matter who he happened to be snogging at the time.

Everybody seemed to have a word for him, even if they weren't able to say it and could only profess it in a pounding on the back or a squeeze of the shoulder. Harry couldn't hear a single thing anyone was saying, for they all wanted to say it at once and as loudly as they could. They all pressed in toward him, determined to get to him, to share a part in the victory that was not just his that dawn.

Nobody considered that he had not slept in what seemed like an age, or that he clearly wanted time alone with the young man that he never let go of as he wandered through the hall, speaking a word here and there, listening to the news trickling in, bowing a head with the bereaved and shaking hands with those who were too tongue-tied to be able to say anything. Neville clutched Gryffindor's sword tightly with one hand, and his other hand gripped Harry's as though he never intended to let go, following Harry through the Great Hall, talking to no small number of his own admirers.

It wasn't until the sun was well in the sky and the crowd was no longer paying sole attention to Harry that he and Neville collapsed on a bench in a corner, exhausted beyond belief.

"It looks to me like you would like some peace and quiet," a light voice sounded from next to them. Harry looked over to see Luna perched on the bench beside them.

"Not likely," Neville said, surveying the crowd.

"I'll distract them for you," she said. "You can use your cloak to get away - no one's likely to be looking for your feet, it's your heads and hearts they're looking for right now."

Somehow, this statement made sense, in a very Luna sort of way. Before Harry or Neville could say a word, Luna had stood up on the bench and cried "Oh! Look, everyone, a Blibbering Humdinger!" As everyone turned to look where she was pointing, Harry swept the cloak over himself and Neville. Luna had been right: they were both tall enough that their feet were far from covered, but she was also right in that nobody noticed.

They shuffled carefully through the hall, Harry becoming rather distracted at how close he was having to keep to Neville in order to keep them both under the cloak, when he spotted two others whose company he also craved, though in an entirely different way.

"It's us," he muttered as they passed close to them. "Come with us?"

They stood up at once and together Harry, Neville, Hermione, and Ron left the Great Hall. Once safely away around the corner, Harry pulled the cloak from him and Neville, dismissing the sly voice in his head that was suggesting all sorts of interesting things they could have been doing under the cloak away from prying eyes.

They had not discussed where they were going, but they unerringly made their way there anyway. The gargoyle guarding the entrance to the headmaster's study said nothing, simply bowed and jumped to the side as Harry approached.

As they entered the office, an earsplitting noise sounded, and Harry - still slightly on edge - jumped. But it was applause and cheers; the portraits of previous headmasters were giving him a standing ovation, waving hats and goblets and tankards and putting their fingers between their teeth and whistling.

They finally fell silent as Harry approached the newest portrait, apparently unaware that he still held Neville's hand tightly.

"The thing in the snitch you gave me," Harry said. "I dropped it somewhere in the forest. I don't think I'm going to go back to look for it. Do you think that's a good idea?"

"I do indeed, my boy," the portrait of Dumbledore said, beaming from behind his half-moon spectacles. "And one that I am not at all surprised you came up with. Does anybody else know where it fell?"

"No." Dumbledore nodded in satisfaction; Neville made a mental note to ask Harry what the blazes he was talking about. "I'm going to keep Ignotus's present, though."

"As is your birthright, my dear boy," Dumbledore agreed affably. "Until you pass it on to your own children."

"But then...there's this." Harry pulled out the Elder Wand and Neville couldn't help but swallow hard. Ron and Hermione looked on it with a reverence that clearly made Harry very uncomfortable.

"I don't want it," he said, almost relishing the looks of shock on their faces. "I was happier with mine. So..."

Harry let go of Neville's hand to rummage around in the pouch around his neck and fish out the pieces of what Neville recognized as the wand he'd been using as long as Neville had known him. When had that broken?

But it didn't seem to matter, for Harry had placed the pieces on the headmaster's desk and tapped them with the Elder Wand, whispering " _reparo_ ," and the pieces knit themselves together, sparks flying from the end as the last crack sealed. Harry lifted his old wand and a smile of satisfaction spread across his face. He turned once more to face Dumbledore's portrait.

"I'm putting the Elder Wand back where it came from," he said decisively. "And then, when I die a natural death, the previous master would never have been defeated, and that will break the line."

"Are you mad?" Ron asked in disbelief.

"I think he's right," Hermione said softly.

"The Elder Wand is more trouble than it's worth," Harry said firmly. "And I've put up with enough trouble for a few lifetimes."

Dumbledore nodded, smiling. His gaze then took in Neville as well as Harry, and he beamed.

"You've no notion how pleased I am that Time has managed to bring you two together at last," he said, with just the tiniest emphasis that Neville was sure Ron and Hermione wouldn't pick up. He might not have picked it up either, nor Harry, had the colors not swirled in his head slightly as he had said it. There was a brief flicker of understanding, a tiny glimpse of a future stretching before him, and then it was gone like a puff of wind.

Harry's hand found its way into Neville's again. Neville carefully and reverently lay the Sword of Gryffindor across the headmaster's desk, where it gleamed in some unknown light source, and then turned to Ron and Hermione.

"I know you're his best mates too, and mine," he said, suddenly feeling so tired that he could not possibly sleep. "But if you'll excuse us, please, we're going to head to the dormitory. I need to take this man's clothes off immediately."

Ron goggled, and Hermione's hand flew up to her mouth to cover her astonished laughter. Harry, however, adopted the goofiest grin Neville had ever seen on his face, and he knew that he was wearing one to match.

"Think they're put out?" Neville asked as they stole along the hallways of the castle toward Gryffindor tower, trying as hard as they could not to run.

"Nah," Harry said, shaking his head. "They're probably off finding an empty classroom for themselves."

"Really?" Neville asked, raising an eyebrow. He nodded after a moment of considering. "Everything worked out rather well, then."

The dormitory was blessedly empty. Harry scrawled a _"GOOD GOD, DO NOT DISTURB_ " sign on a scrap of parchment and plastered it to the door before slamming it behind him, hurriedly locking it, and falling into Neville's arms as they backed toward one of their beds, mouths pressed together, all cares forgotten for the time being, and reveled in the knowledge that they were both alive and together, and nothing existed in the world any longer that would change that.


	12. Epilogue: 30 Years Later

 

 **  
_30 Years Later_   
**

"...and you've got interviews for your new aide today, Mr. Potter, beginning at noon, so just a few minutes."

"Thank you, Matilda," Harry said, reaching over to pick up his quill. "And how are you doing? Not still having morning sickness, I hope."

"Oh, no, that ended long ago," Matilda said, waving a hand. "I'm anxious to get the little bugger out, though - I'm starting to wonder if he's actually a bludger -"

"When is your last day again?"

"Two weeks, sir." She checked her clipboard. "I should go back to my desk so that I can greet your first aide candidate. Miss Reed, American girl, I screened her myself - very sharp - I think you'll like her."

"Brilliant," Harry said as he drew out a sheet of parchment for taking notes. "Thank you, Matilda. Go ahead and bring her back when she gets here."

Trying not to scrawl, he dated the top of the sheet in the trademark blue ink of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Detecting who was handling the sheet, the parchment sprouted his letterhead - "HARRY JAMES POTTER, ORDER OF MERLIN, FIRST CLASS, CHIEF COMMANDER, DEPARTMENT OF MAGICAL LAW ENFORCEMENT." He thought it looked a little ostentatious, himself, but Matilda insisted that he needed to be an authoritative figure and that meant all the trappings to go along with it. His aide had been a godsend, really, ever since he had been promoted from Head Auror four years ago. He was sad to have to replace her.

"Right this way," he could hear her say, no doubt directing this Miss Reed to his office. A glass orb on his desk glowed, letting him know that he had another visitor checking in for him at the front desk of the Ministry, and his attention was on it as the young woman first walked into the room.

"Good afternoon," he said, standing, taking his eyes away from the orb and reaching out a hand. His eyes took her in and he froze, words fleeing his mind.

"Good afternoon, sir," the young woman said, shaking his hand. "I'm Lillian Reed. It's good to meet you at last." Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Is something the matter?"

"No," Harry said, trying to hide his astonishment. "No, you just...remind me of someone."

There was absolutely no mistaking that reddish-brown hair, the slight angle to the eyes, the way the nose curved or the way she carried herself just so, every movement an expression of grace.

"Someone you like, I hope," Lillian said in a slightly nervous, joking tone.

Harry nodded. "Very much," he managed to say, "Though I haven't seen her in a very long time. Seems almost like...another life."

"You may have known my mother at school," Lillian offered. "My foster parents told me that one of my parents was British, and that I was born here, though they didn't know much else."

"It's very possible," Harry said, trying to calm his gibbering brain. He took a quiet, steadying breath. "So what brings you to Britain? I understand you were raised in America."

"Looking for ancestry information, actually," Lillian responded. "But I don't have a lot to go on. Most of the birth records were lost in that explosion a few years ago."

Harry nodded. "Quite a few important things were lost in that explosion. I remember it well." He pushed his glasses up with one finger and picked up his quill, the original shock finally beginning to wear off. "Please, tell me about yourself. And details - I'd like to hear details..."

* * *

Harry's eyes flicked to the parchment in the black frame at the corner of the desk. In Matilda's precise hand, silver letters began to appear: _"Your husband is here to see you."_ He glanced at the clock; it was a quarter of one. He turned his eyes back to the young woman sitting in front of his desk; she was straightening her bottle-green robes anxiously.

"Lillian," he said, the name feeling oddly familiar on his tongue, "it has been a pleasure meeting you. You can expect my owl in a few days' time." On the parchment in the frame, he scribbled _"send him in."_

Lillian's face brightened. "Thank you, sir." She smiled impishly as she turned to go, looking over her shoulder. "Out of curiosity, what might I expect it to say?"

Harry grinned, suppressing a laugh as he stood up to open the door for her. She always had tried to worm surprises out of him. "Let's just say that you are a strong contender for the position."

There was another smile like a sunbeam. "Have a good afternoon, sir."

"You as well," he said, opening the door. He could see Neville striding toward him from down the hall in his waiting room, but he stopped and stared in open astonishment as Lillian passed him.

"Did you see..." he asked as he approached, eyes wide, glancing back every few moments. "She's -"

"Lily. I know." Harry watched her turn a corner and then she was out of sight. "Even the name."

"Odd, isn't it, how these little coincidences happen," a voice behind Harry said mildly. Harry turned slightly.

"Professor," he said to the portrait, nodding once in greeting. The portrait of Dumbledore responded in kind.

"Professor Longbottom," Dumbledore said, turning slightly to face Neville, "How do you think the new Charms professor is going to hold up? Very young, but quite brilliant - I saw her interviews. What was her name again?"

Neville licked his lips. "Clarke, I believe. Miss Daisy Clarke." Harry spun from the portrait to look at Neville. Neville nodded solemnly. "That's what I came to tell you about. I thought I was going mad..." he glanced down the hallway where Lillian had disappeared moments before. "Not so much now."

"What was that you said about coincidences?" Harry asked, turning back to face the portrait. Dumbledore took off his spectacles to polish them on his robe.

"Why, just a simple observation," he said blandly. "Coincidences are odd enough in themselves, and for two such amazing coincidences to happen at once, why...that almost seems as though someone would have to have a hand in the situation." He carefully placed his spectacles back on his nose. "Not that I'd know anything about that, of course."

"Of course not," Harry said, a smile slowly starting to pull at the corners of his mouth. "Just out of curiosity...you wouldn't happen to know where the actual portrait of Dumbledore is right now, would you?"

"Why, I do believe he's consulting with one of the apothecaries at St. Mungo's," the portrait said, winking. Neville's eyes darted between the portrait and Harry, understanding beginning to slowly dawn on his face. The portrait smiled knowingly at Neville. "Do have a good school year, Professor Longbottom. I'm sure the newest staff member could use a mentor, don't you?" Neville nodded, looking as though words were failing him.

"But how are they here?" Harry asked. "They're not even supposed to exist."

"Well, of course they exist," the portrait said in an amused tone. "They just aren't your daughters. Same souls, different people." He smiled blandly. "Although not too terribly different, as I'm sure you've noticed. Pardon me, good sirs, but here is where I make my goodbyes," the figure said with a hint of finality, beginning to walk out of the frame.

"Why?" Harry blurted before the figure that wasn't quite Dumbledore had left the frame entirely. The figure paused.

"Why?" His eyes twinkled. "Let us just say that deeds are always rewarded, given enough Time."

And he stepped from the portrait without another word.

Harry unconsciously reached behind him for Neville's hand, who just as reflexively took it.

"So you think you'll hire her?" Neville asked in a conversational tone.

"She has some unique qualifications," Harry responded. "And you? Think you're going to take this Professor Clarke under your wing?"

"She'll be like the daughter I never had," Neville said wryly. Harry laughed, was somewhat surprised to find that there were tears in his eyes along with the laughter, and tried to figure out where they were coming from. Neville pulled him close with one arm, reached out to close the office door with the other, and held him, Harry's back to his front.

For the time being, Harry ignored his inbox and the day's appointment sheet. He closed his eyes and settled back against Neville, who shifted to hold him just a little tighter. Their minds were both elsewhere, but their minds were elsewhere together, and somehow, Harry pondered, it seemed as though a balance had been returned to the world.

He felt something odd, then, and reached into the pocket of his robes to pull out the flask of dancing lights. He'd not seen it for years; it had failed to reappear after the night he had defeated Voldemort. Neville made a surprised sound as Harry unstoppered it and the timelines flew from the glass neck to fill the room.

Where the lines had once frayed and dulled, they now simply dimmed, growing faint before disappearing into nothing. There was Harry's, and Neville's, twined around one another like a twist of rope; there was James, their brilliant grown son, twining around another line before fading into the future; and from nowhere seemed to come two other lines that sashayed about Harry and Neville's before settling in as a part of the complex weave that was the rest of their lives.

Harry twisted his neck to look up at Neville and smiled. "Together, then?" he asked as he pulled out his wand. Neville answered Harry's smile with one of his own as he drew his wand as well. In time with each other, they flicked their wands and the lines dissolved into millions of tiny sparks, diamond-bright and shining, before twinkling back into the nothingness that is forever.

And with that, all truly was well.

 **  
**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note
> 
> The real purpose of this note is to let you all know that there are several chapters that I wrote for Revisionism that ended up on the cutting room floor. I much prefer to have the Big Damn Kiss and then epilogue, rather than dragging the story on for several more chapters, and I ultimately cut those chapters to go straight to the epilogue. However, I like what happened in the years after Harry and Neville leaving school: where and how exactly James comes into play, what really happened in Bath with the necromancer (which originally was just a throwaway line in chapter 2!), and how Harry and Neville's relationship plays out during their twenties. They just didn't fit with the flow of Revisionism, as Harry and Neville are unaware that they're revising their timelines as they live them, unlike the major theme of the parent story.
> 
> After tinkering with these chapters for a while, they ended up morphing into their own story that deserves to not only stand on its own (albeit with unseverable roots in Revisionism), but also be posted. If you enjoyed Revisionism, its companion Lost in Revision is available right now as a Work in Progress.
> 
> Again, thank you for reading.


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